>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, DC.
>> Well, good morning
everyone and greetings
from the Library of Congress.
I'm Mary-Jane Deeb, I'm the interim
director for the Kluge Center,
and my other hat, I'm the chief
of the African Middle East Division
here at the Library of Congress.
So we're delighted to see you
all, what wonderful audience.
And before I make some brief
remarks I would also ask you all
to silence your cellphones and
any other electronic devices
because well, today's program
is being filmed for the Library
of Congress and the Kluge
Center websites, as well as,
for future placement
on the Library's YouTube
and iTunes channels.
And also today's program
is being livestreamed
by the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
So we welcome viewers watching
us from around the world.
Okay, so this program
today is co-sponsored
by both the NASA Astrobiology
Institute and by the Kluge Center.
So let me tell you a few things
about each of those institutions.
About the John Kluge
Center, that one --
that center was established
through a generous endowment
from philanthropist John Kluge.
The Library of Congress
established that center in 2000
to bring together scholars and
researchers from around the world,
to stimulate and energize one
another, and to distill wisdom
from the library's rich resources
and collections, and to interact
with policymakers in Washington.
The Kluge Center invites
and welcomes senior scholars
to the library and provides space
where they can take full advantage
of one of the world's largest
repositories of knowledge in pursuit
of their academic studies
and in various fields.
The center is also the home
of the Henry Kissinger Chair
and Foreign Policy and International
Relations, the Jack Kemp Chair
in Political Economy, and of course
the NASA Chair in Astrobiology.
The NASA Chair in Astrobiology
was set
up by Baruch Blumberg NASA Program,
and it was established as a focus
in the nation's capital
for the exploration
of issues surrounding life's
collective future in the universe
for humans and other
species on Earth and beyond.
The program capitalizes discussions
and reflection on the impact
of discovering whether there
is life beyond our planet
and on the implication
of such discoveries.
Of course we'll be spending
two days discussing this issue
so I'm not going to go
further and talk about this.
But I want to say a few words about
the chair which takes its name
from Nobel Prize winner
Baruch "Barry" Blumberg,
the founder of the institute.
Dr. Blumberg envisioned
a senior scholar position
within the Kluge Center that would
examine the scientific discoveries
of astrobiology within the context
of the humanities and
social sciences.
And Astrobiology Chair is
an example of the profound
and varied significant subjects
of research enabled by the Library
of Congress's collections.
Thanks and recognitions go to those
who set it up and I want primarily
to recognize Dr. Mary Voytek here
who has been such an important --
who played such an important role
in getting the program further on.
Also Carl Pilcher and
Ed Goolish of NASA.
And of course Dr. Carolyn
Brown, who retired
but she was the former
director of the Kluge Center.
And I also want to recognize of
course the person you all know here,
Dr. Steven Dick for his
tenure as Blumberg Chair.
He's a collegiate scholar bringing
a wealth of knowledge and good humor
to the Kluge Center, but he's
going to be introduced a bit later.
And now I would like to
introduce Congressman Lamar Smith.
He has been the force behind it
from across the road
here from Capitol Hill.
US Representative Lamar Smith
represents the 21st Congressional
District of Texas.
He serves as chairman
of the Science, Space,
and Technology Committee, which has
jurisdiction over programs at NASA,
the Department of Energy, the
Environmental Protection Agency,
the National Science Foundation,
the Federal Aviation Administration,
and the National Institute
of Standards and Technology.
That's quite a portfolio.
He's a fifth generation Texan
and native of San Antonio.
Congressman Smith graduated
from Yale University
and Southern Methodist
University of Law.
He has been a great friend of the
library's astrobiology program
and we are honored to have him
offer welcome remarks this year,
as he has last year.
In December 2013 Congressman Smith
organized the first congressional
hearings on the current state of
astrobiology research and the search
for bio-signatures in our
solar system and beyond.
So, we are happy to
welcome him here.
Congressman Lamar Smith.
[ Applause ]
>> Hon. Lamar Smith: Dr.
Deeb, thank you very much
for that nice introduction,
and Dr. Steven Dick thank you
for inviting me to be
here today as well.
This is our second annual, although
I mentioned to someone a while ago,
it feels like the fifth
or sixth annual.
But that's a credit to
you because we're talking
about the subject so often.
And Dr. Deeb I wanted to mention
to you that we've now had a total
of three hearings in this
Congress on astrobiology as well.
And that's just the beginning;
we have a long ways to go.
But it's the most fascinating
subject to me
and I've been reading books about it
for years, including several books
by Seth Shostak for
a long time as well.
And let me mention to you all today
that you're going to be hearing
from the experts shortly during
the course of the program.
I am not one of those experts.
I am simply their cheerleader and
I'm happy to cheer them on on such,
as I say, such a fascinating
subject.
Also I want to mention and
regret that I'm going to have
to leave fairly shortly because
we have scheduled another hearing
of the committee for early this
morning, but I have Allison Rose
who will be taking
good notes for me,
who's a staff member
of the committee, too.
There's a reason why over eight
million people visit the National
Air and Space Museum every year.
And by the way it's the most
popular museum in America.
Space exploration captures
the imagination of Americans
and encourages future
generations to dream big,
work hard, and shoot for the stars.
Space exploration is an
investment in our nation's future,
often the far distant future.
I don't know if space
is the final frontier,
I do believe it is
the next frontier.
New scientific discoveries are
being made within our solar system.
The Curiosity rover has confirmed
that Mars once had liquid
water on its surface.
The Cassini spacecraft has
provided us with new insights
about the moons of
Jupiter and Saturn.
The New Horizons Mission
will tell us more
about the dwarf planet Pluto.
And a proposed mission to Jupiter's
moon Europa could answer questions
about whether or not life
might exist in its sub-ice sea.
The study of other planets
in our solar system also
tells us about our own planet.
As described in the July 2014 cover
article for National Geographic ,
scientists are finding life
in places on this planet
where previous generations
thought life would never exist.
These discoveries have led
us to broaden our concepts
about which planets may
contain life and the kind
of life we might find there.
We are also beginning to study
planets outside of our solar system.
The search for exoplanets
and Earth-like planets
is a relatively new
but inspiring area
of space exploration.
Scientists are discovering new
kinds of planets and solar systems
in our own galaxy that
we never knew existed.
The discovery of Earth-like planets
will open up new opportunities
for American astronomers
and explorers,
and some of these planets could
even contain the first evidence
of organic life outside
of the Earth.
According to a poll commissioned
by the National Geographic Channel
over 60% of Americans believe
that life exists on other planets.
The United States pioneered the
field of astrobiology and continues
to lead the world in
this type of research.
The publication of scientific
findings illustrates the field's
growth and growing popularity
in the past 20 years.
In 1995, fewer than 50 papers
were published on astrobiology,
by 2012 that number had
increased to more than 500.
In 1995, fewer than 500 scientific
reports cited astrobiology,
but by 2012 it was almost 12,000.
To date almost 1000
planets have been found
by the Kepler Space Telescope.
Last April astronomers discovered
the first Earth-like planet orbiting
[inaudible] at a distance where
liquid water could be present,
a key factor for hosting life.
The discovery of even microbes on
planets within our solar system
or beyond would be the most
newsworthy story in decades.
It could affect the way we
view our place in the universe
and it could create increased
interest in the core disciplines
that fall under the umbrella of
astrobiology, including chemistry,
physics, geology, and biology.
Even if we don't find life
immediately we are inspiring
students to study science,
technology, engineering, and math.
These are fields that all certainly
help students succeed in the future
and help America remain on the
cutting edge of innovation.
Cooperation between NASA
space-based telescopes,
like the upcoming James
Webb Space telescope,
and the transiting
exoplanet survey satellite,
and ground-based telescopes
funded in part
by the National Science
Foundation, has enabled astronomers
to expand their stargazing
capabilities.
The science committee regularly
hosts hearings on the future
of human space flight, the search
for exoplanets, and the exploration
of the universe for signs
of life and the development
of new telescopes and spacecraft
that will enable us to learn more
about our planet and the universe.
In fact last year the
Science, Space,
and Technology Committee
held 18 hearings on space.
One of the most consequential
pieces of legislation produced
by our committee is the
NASA Authorization Act.
It provides overall
guidance for the agency.
It addition to pursuing
our exploration of Mars,
the bill includes a provision
for a mission to Europa
with a goal of launching by 2021.
The bill also instructs the
NASA administrator to enter
into an arrangement with the
National Academies of Science
to develop a long-term strategy
for astrobiology research.
And that's the first time that
has been specifically mentioned
in the NASA bill.
The committee passed a
NASA authorization act
with a unanimous bipartisan
vote and over 400 Republicans
and Democrats came together
to endorse the consensus
bill on the House floor.
The vote was actually 401 to two.
You might wonder about those two.
I did. And I accosted one on
the House floor who happened
to be a member of the
Science Committee.
I said, "Why did you vote
against the NASA bill?"
And he said, "Well, I lost my
primary in Georgia yesterday
and I'm voting against everything."
So, don't try to figure out who
that was, but that explains one
and I'm sure the other one
was equally explainable.
The committee passed
NASA Authorization Act
with a unanimous bipartisan vote.
Like I said, 400 Republicans
and Democrats voted for it.
But this exemplifies the
overwhelming support by Congress
for the US to remain a
world leader in space.
This support is reflected
on both sides of the capital
and on both sides of the aisle.
We look forward to working
with the Senate to pass a bill
that will be signed into
law by the president.
And by the way, sometimes
serendipitous meetings occur
and last night I was
at the White House,
they called it the White
House picnic and I ran
into Senator Bill Nelson who
is shepherding the NASA bill
through the Senate, and he said,
"We hope to hotline the
NASA bill, this week."
Meaning get it through the Senate
this week without any dissent,
and then he and I are going
to work on trying to iron
out the differences between
the Senate and the House bill
and pass it in the
lame duck session.
So, it was nice to have that
conversation with Bill last night
and it does look like the prospects
for more than a single year,
a multi-year reauthorization
of NASA might well occur
in November or December.
Space exploration goes
beyond rockets and avionics.
It is about inspiration
and discovery.
And I hadn't thought about it
until just a few minutes ago coming
up the steps, but there's
a wonderful quote
by the poet Robert
Browning when he wrote, "Oh,
that a man's reach should exceed
his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
And sometimes that's what
we do with our exploration
and our study of the cosmos.
Human space flight
robotic exploration
and space science represent
the highest aspirations
and greatest ambitions
of the American people.
So thank you for being
a part of that effort.
Thank you for being experts,
and thank you for your interest,
and good to be with you today.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you Congressman
Lamar Smith.
Thank you for your
inspiring comments.
We're all very grateful for
your presence here today.
And now to the other
pole of our cooperation
of with NASA astrobiology program.
With have with us today Dr.
Mary Voytek who took charge
of NASA's astrobiology program
on September 15th, 2008,
as a senior scientist
for astrobiology
and the science mission
director at NASA headquarters.
Dr. Voytek entered NASA from the
US Geological Survey in Reston,
Virginia, where she headed
the USGS Microbiology
and Molecular Ecology Laboratory.
Dr. Voytek's primary research
interest is aquatic microbial
ecology and biogeochemistry.
She has studied environmental
controls on microbial,
transformations of
nutrients, xenobiotics,
and metals in freshwater
and marine systems.
She has worked in several extreme
environments including Antarctica,
the Arctic, hyper-saline lakes,
deep sea, hydrothermal events,
and terrestrial deep surface sites.
She has served on several
advisory groups, the Department
of the Interior, the
Department of Energy,
the National Science
Foundation, and NASA,
including the Planetary
Protection Subcommittee.
She has also supported NASA's
astrobiology program serving
as a NASA representative to a number
of [inaudible] convened studies,
exploring the potential
for life in the universe.
She has held numerous positions
in several science societies
and is currently a board member
of the American Geophysical Union.
Dr. Mary Voytek.
[ Applause ]
>> Mary Voytek: Well I'm going
to keep my comment short,
and I must say that I think
Congressman Smith if he ever decides
to leave politics can have my job.
He did a fantastic job describing
the excitement associated
with studying astrobiology
and the search for life,
and recognizing all the
work the NASA has done.
I'll just point out for those in
the audience that don't realize
that this has been an enterprise
for NASA for over 50 years.
We've had funded research
in understanding the origin
and evolution of life on Earth,
looking at all the places
that we might find it here,
categorizing its limits,
looking for unusual habitats
and mapping that to other places
in the universe more
recently close-in
within our own solar system, and
now looking further to planets
that orbit other stars
out besides our own.
I think Lamar Smith also mentioned
all of the planned missions,
all of the discoveries
we've been making.
I will actually, since we've on
numerous occasions recognized
that there's water on Mars,
I will point out that Curiosity
has actually shown evidence
of water bodies, of
lakes, of rivers.
Not just finding hydrated chemicals,
or evidence of water having been
there because of the chemistry
that we observe but actually
geomorphological features that show
that there are actually
environments with water in it
that could have supported
life in the past,
and that's extremely exciting to us.
Curiosity also was able to
make the first measurement
of geochronology off of Earth.
So they were able to actually date
the environment they were sampling
in and also make an estimate
of how recently the surfaces
that they were sampling
had been uncovered due
to weathering processes on
the surface of the planet.
And these are all fantastic
discoveries that we've made.
And as our symposium today is
called Preparing for Discovery,
NASA has been involved in
preparing for the discovery
from the scientific point of view.
We've been funding this research.
I've just mentioned several
things our missions have observed.
And today's symposium
is going to talk
about how people besides science, in
all walks of life around the world,
are preparing for amazing
discoveries like finding life
and even finding something
a lowly microbe,
which of course I think
is tremendously exciting
since I spent most of my
research life looking for life
in strange places, all the
way through to complex life
and maybe even intelligent life.
So I appreciate the program
that Steve has put together
and I think we're going -- looking
towards having a really enjoyable
and informative two days.
So with that I'll turn
it over to you
or the introduction
that comes for you.
So thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> Good morning and thank
you Mary for your comments.
My name is Dan Turello,
I'm the program specialist
at the John W. Kluge Center
at the Library of Congress
and it is my great
honor this morning
to introduce our NASA Library
of Congress Blumberg Chair
in Astrobiology --
that's always a mouthful.
As you may well imagine
a full rendering
of Steven's CV would require
many, many pages and far more time
than we have this morning.
So in the interest of moving things
forward I'm going to highlight a few
of the salient moments from
his distinguished career.
Steve received a Bachelor
of Science in Astrophysics
from Indiana University, and then
an MA and a PhD in the History
and Philosophy of Science
also from IU.
For 24 years Steven worked as an
astronomer and historian of science
for the United States Naval
Observatory in Washington, DC,
including three years at the Naval
Observatory Southern Hemisphere
Station in New Zealand.
It was during this time
that he wrote the history
of the observatory, the
first national observatory
of the United States, which was
published as Sky and Ocean Joined,
the US Naval Observatory
1830-2000 .
In 2003, Steven was named
Chief Historian for NASA,
and during this period Steve
wrote, among other areas,
about the importance of
exploration for society
and edited several volumes on the
societal impact of space flight.
Steve is the author of 19 books
and numerous articles on the topics
of astrobiology, astronomy,
and the history of science.
He is the recipient of the
NASA Exceptional Service Metal,
the Navy Meritorious
Civilian Service Metal,
the NASA Group Achievement Award,
and the 2006 Leroy Doggett Prize
for Historical Astronomy.
Last but not least, I can
tell you without a shadow
of a doubt I've never
had the good fortune
of introducing someone who's
had a planet named after them,
but this in fact was exactly
what happened in 2009.
The International Astronomical
Union designated minor planet 6544,
Steven Dick, in his honor.
I will add on a personal note,
Steven has brought a wealth
of wisdom and scholarly goodwill to
the library and to the Kluge Center.
He has been collegial and
most generous with his time
and we are deeply grateful
for his many contributions,
not the least of which has been to
gather such a distinguished group
of scholars from all over
the world at the Kluge Center
for our conference
these next few days.
So without further ado
please welcome Steven Dick.
[ Applause ]
>> Steven J. Dick: Well good
morning everyone, it's great to see
such a big crowd here
already this morning.
We've been waiting for
this day for a long time.
I want to thank Dan
for the introduction,
Mary and Chairman Smith, and
particularly Chairman Smith
for his sustained interest in
astrobiology as evidenced by the two
or three congressional
hearings on astrobiology
that have been held
over the last year.
In both of those -- or at least two
of those hearings the question came
up what do we do if we find life?
What would the impact be on society?
And that's what we are here to
discuss over the next few days.
We've brought scholars here
from around the country
and around the world to
talk about this subject.
Our Preparing for Discovery: A
Rational Approach to the Impact
of Finding Microbial, Complex,
and Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.
That title, you may be able
to tell, was carefully crafted
to emphasize several things.
First of all, this is not your
usual astrobiology meeting
where technical aspects are
discussed in minute detail.
Those are important meetings;
we have them all the time.
But this meeting is really about the
humanistic aspects of astrobiology,
particularly preparing for
life, preparing for finding life
and the potential impact if we do.
And secondly, we say that
it's a rational approach,
what that means we'll see as we
go along here, but to me it means
at a minimum a systematic,
a scholarly,
and thorough attempt tackling the
problem, making use of knowledge
from a wide variety of disciplines.
So you'll find on the program not
only scientists but also a lot
of philosophers because they're the
ones who look at the foundations
of what we believe are concepts.
You'll find theologians,
historians, anthropologists.
So a very broad array
of scholars here.
And thirdly I want to emphasize
that this is not just a meeting
as Mary said about the
search for intelligence,
or the impact of the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence,
but also about microbial
and complex life.
You never know but
many of us consider
that microbes will be found first,
certainly if it's a NASA discovery,
because that's NASA's
focus on astrobiology
and its program at present.
And as Mary said, I
think the discovery
of even microbial life beyond
Earth would be perhaps the greatest
discovery in the history of science.
The impacts would be
great, maybe not as great
as if something started talking
back to us, but still I think
to find a microbe would an
indication that life may be common
in the universe [inaudible]
if it's a second genesis.
So, why are we undertaking
this subject at this time?
It admittedly is a pretty far-out
subject but it's only far-out
until you actually discover, right?
Then it's not far-out and you
have to figure out what to do.
So, as Seth Shostak will tell us
in his first talk, current advances
in astrobiology I think
make it prudent
that we examine the societal
impact and prepare for a discovery.
So, let me see.
These items have already
been mentioned both by Mary
and by Chairman Smith, but we're
being driven in this direction
in preparing for discovery because
all of these things are happening
in astrobiology, which is a very
robust discipline these days.
You all have heard
about the thousands
of planets are being found
beyond our solar system.
They're beginning to look
at possible bio-signatures
in the atmospheres of those
planets, organics on Mars, Titan,
and in interstellar molecular
clouds, not life itself
but the building blocks of life.
Deep oceans on the Jupiter
Jovian satellite of Europa,
and the Saturnian satellite
of Enceladus.
Where you have water
you may have life.
And the extremophile
life on Earth --
life in extreme environments
really a new thing
over the last several decades.
And finally, of course, the search
is for extraterrestrial intelligence
which many of you know about
from the radial searches
which I'm sure -- we
have several people here
from the Study Institute, I'm sure
Seth will be talking about that.
So, you might say,
well, why not just wait
until we make the discovery and
worry about it at that point.
Arthur C. Clarke had
something to say about that.
He thinks it -- back writing in
the '70s, it's so likely that,
"It's safest to assume that they are
out there and to consider the manner
in which this fact may
impinge on human society."
And if you don't want to believe
Arthur C. Clarke you can go back
to the National Academy of
Sciences, all the way back in 1962,
when exobiology was being founded.
The National Academy Report
in 1962 said that what is
at stake is the chance to gain a
new perspective on humanity's place
in nature, a new level of discussion
on the meaning and nature of life.
So there are very large
stakes here in this discovery.
So I think given these
latest developments
in astrobiology it's high time
that we look systematically
at this problem of
astrobiology in society,
just as other areas of science do.
And I want to emphasize that, you
know, the society impact is a part
of what is looked at with regard to
scientific advances in other areas,
such as the Human Genome
Project, which had
and still has a very
robust ethical, legal,
and societal impact
research program.
Three to 5% of its $3 billion
budget went towards those studies.
The National Science Foundation has
a Technology and Society Program.
It has a center -- other
programs like the Center
for Nanotechnology in Society.
The American Association
for the Advancement
of Science has a Societal Impacts
of Science and Engineering session.
The NASA Astrobiology
Institute has an Astrobiology
and Science focus group which
we'll be hearing more about.
And of course, as you
heard from Chairman Smith,
Congress is interested in
what the impact might be.
So that's what we're
going to talk about here.
Also, in terms of NASA
itself, I interpret this part
of the Aeronautics and
Space Act of 1958 to say
that NASA should be talking
about the societal impact
of its discoveries, and the NASA
History Office has published several
volumes on the societal impact
with at least one more
forthcoming in the near future.
Also, if you're interested in
looking more at this astrobiology
and society problem you can
look at the special issue
of Astrobiology Journal
in 2012 with this article
about building an interdisciplinary
research committee studying
these aspects.
But also this entire issue
is devoted to the history
and philosophy of astrobiology.
So, today we're going to
be looking at frameworks
for approaching the problems
of discovery and impact,
as well as how we can try
and get out of our heads
and transcend anthropocentrism
in looking at concepts like life
and intelligence, and
culture and civilization,
and technology and communication.
And tomorrow we'll look more
specifically at the philosophical,
religious, cultural,
and practical impacts
of finding extraterrestrial life.
So keep in mind that
these questions are --
that we'll be asking
are foundational,
we're looking at the
very roots of our ideas,
some of our most cherished concepts
including what it means to be human.
If you're looking for
extraterrestrial life
out there it forces you to look back
at us and what it means to be human.
And I maintain -- I've
always maintained that even
in the unlikely event that
we never discover life
out there I think these kinds
of questions are worth asking
because astrobiology forces
us to look at ourselves
from this foundational perspective.
You've already heard
about Baruch Blumberg.
I'd like to dedicate this symposium
to Barry Blumberg whose
chair I now hold here
at the Library of Congress.
As was mentioned before, Barry won
the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1976
for isolating the Hepatitis B
virus, for developing the vaccine,
and then for giving
it away to the world,
work that has saved
millions of lives.
He was also the first director of
the NASA Astrobiology Institute,
and many of us remember him
fondly for his passionate interest
in that subject, not only
for the science but also
for the societal aspects
we'll be discussing here
over the next few days.
Barry always liked to think
of astrobiology as exploration
in the tradition of Lewis and Clark.
And so I would like for us
to consider this symposium
in that light as well, as
exploration pushing the envelope
of knowledge into new uncharted
territory wherever that may lead.
And that's what this meeting here
over the next two days is all about.
So before I turn this over to
Seth let me also thank the Library
of Congress, which I've found to
be just a totally magnificent place
to do research, with the
people, the resources.
And I want particularly to thank the
staff of the John W. Kluge Center,
especially Carolyn Brown,
who was recently retired,
but also JoAnne Kitching some of you
are familiar with, Jason Steinhauer,
Dan Turello, and all the rest of
the staff, you know who you are.
This meeting could not have
happened without their input.
Finally I want to thank,
before we go on,
to thank NASA Astrobiology Program
and the Astrobiology Institute
for their support and for
the live webcast today.
Finally, my thanks to all
the speakers for coming
from around the country
and around the world.
And so I think with that
we'll begin the program
with Seth Shostak's overview.
Seth is the senior astronomer
at the Study Institute
out in Mountain View, California.
He has his Doctorate in
Astronomy from Caltech.
I like to think of him
as the great communicator
because he always does a great
job in communicating the science
and he's always very
lively and informative.
So, and he was one of the ones
who testified just last May
before Chairman Smith's committee
on the subject of astrobiology.
So, Seth I'll turn it over to you.
[ Applause ]
>> Seth Shostak: Thank you very much
Steve, and thanks to the Library
of Congress for providing
such an elegant venue
for the conference
here for two days.
I've been given a fairly
restricted subject matter,
which is current approaches
to finding life beyond Earth
and what it would mean
if it happens.
Obviously that's the entire
subject of this symposium.
So there's no way I can do this
in 20 minutes so I'm just going
to throw some ideas out at you,
most of which you'll find offensive,
uninspiring, and lacking
in imagination.
But that's merely to get you wound
up very early in the morning.
For those of us in California it's
especially early in the morning.
So, if my comments are
less than coherent, well,
to begin with that's not surprising.
And secondly, I hope you
won't take offense to that.
Anyhow, let me give
you a brief overview
of how we're looking
for life in space.
I will, in fact, concentrate
on my day job which is looking
for the type of life we call
intelligent, which means it can hold
up its side of the conversation.
I know Lori Marino thinks
that certain occupants
of the ocean may be intelligent,
but on the other hand I've read
their literature and it's limited.
So, let me move on on this.
Does this baby work?
Come in Earth.
I'm hitting forward.
Hello guys in the back.
There we go.
Okay. People will occasionally
ask me
at cocktail parties do I really
think that there's life in space.
I find this a very peculiar
question because if I didn't think
that I wouldn't keep the job I
have, it's not that lucrative.
But the reason I do, in the end,
just boils down to
very large numbers.
This is the number of stars in the
part of the universe we can see.
The entire universe might
conceivably be infinite
but in any case it's much larger.
That's a very big number, 10,000
billion billion, and what we know is
that most of those have planets.
Most of those stars
have planets, 70-80%,
which is in astronomy
the same as all.
Right? Don't have astronomers
do your 1040.
So, that's a lot and that means the
implication directly is that if all
of those planets are sterile
and you're the only
interesting thing happening
in the cosmos then
you are a miracle.
And you like to think that
because your mom told you that ever
since you were born,
but on the other hand
that would be exceptional
in the extreme.
So the sort of middle
of the road approach is
to say you're not a miracle, you're
just another duck in a row of ducks.
This is the number of planets
in the Milky Way roughly,
plus or minus two.
So, that's a lot of planets.
Okay? But the more
interesting results are those
that have come recently from
the Kepler Space Telescope,
one of the most successful --
in my opinion, one of the
most successful missions
that NASA has ever launched.
Very simple idea, Bill
Borucki at NASA Ames came
up with this idea many decades
ago, finally got funding.
The idea here is to answer
a very simple question.
What fraction of stars out
there that are like the sun,
which is about 8% of all stars,
what fraction of them have planets
that could be like the Earth?
Okay. And it's just beginning
to answer that question.
In the meanwhile it has
found thousands of planets.
But finding planets like
the Earth takes longer
than finding other kinds of
planets for technical reasons,
which we don't need to go into.
But here are some preliminary
results that were published
by some people at the
University of California
at Berkeley that are of interest.
They say that something
like one in five stars
like the sun will have a
habitable Earth-size planet.
Habitable just means that water
would neither freeze nor boil
on the surface, okay, and that
depends on things like atmospheres
which we know nothing about.
But on the other hand 22%, one in
five, that's a very high percentage.
This number might be wrong by a
factor of two, but a factor of two,
once again, is not so
interesting in astronomy.
Okay? In astronomy
pi is equal to one.
Okay. But the far more common
types of stars, called red dwarfs,
little small guys, and
there are many more of those
than there are stars like
the sun, somewhere between 16
and 53% was the conclusion of this
paper, might have habitable planets.
Okay? All right, red
dwarf stars are, as I say,
three quarters of all stars.
Right? In the realm of stars
natures, like in every other realm,
there are more small
guys than big guys.
You go to Africa everybody's
interested in the [inaudible]
or the big critters, but there
are lot more small critters
than big critters.
The same with stars.
The bottom line of this
is something like, again,
one in five of all stars may
have an analog to the Earth.
That's a lot of habitable worlds
and indeed the number of Earths
in our own galaxy might be
on the order of 50 billion.
So, for the 20, 30, 40%, as Lamar
Smith said, of Americans who think,
well, maybe we're the smartest
things or the only things alive
in the universe, again,
that makes you a miracle
and miracles have fairly
low standing in science.
Okay. Now, I'm just
going to back up here
and just briefly review
our techniques
for finding life beyond
Earth because it think
that despite all the stories
you read in the papers
and the science sections about
oh well, here's water on Mars
and here's this, here's
that, and so forth.
All these stories to my mind
break down into three stories,
a kind of three-way horse race
to find life in space ace, ace.
And I think that each of
these horses has a priory more
or less equal opportunity or
likelihood perhaps I should say,
to cross the finish line
in, say, the next 20 years.
The big money is all in finding it
nearby, on Mars, some in the moons
of the outer solar system.
This is a photo of
Mars for those of you
who weren't there this last weekend,
and you can see those streaks
at the bottom, the brown streaks.
There are many interpretations
of what those streaks may be,
but they appear in
the Martian summer,
and one possible explanation is that
that's frozen water that has melted
in the Martian summer and is
wetting the ground underneath it.
And maybe the fastest way to
find life in space is simply
to send a rover to those
streaks, dig up the dirt,
look at it under a microscope
and maybe you'll see something.
They may not be due to water
but anyhow there is a lot
of tantalizing evidence on Mars,
everyone's favorite inhabited
planet, but not just Mars,
there are more than a half
dozen other worlds just
in our solar system that might have
liquids that could spawn the kind
of dirty chemistry we call life.
All right.
And here's another obvious
place, the Lakes of Titan,
that's an artist impression but
this is a real photo made by radar
of the surface of this
moon of Saturn.
You see these lakes, there's
a dime in this photo for scale
but if you can't see that
those lakes are fairly large,
the larger of them is about
the size of Lake Erie.
Okay? So these are big.
And Dirk in the audience here has
suggested NASA ought to get back
into the real business of
exploration and do it ships
as we used to do it 200, 300 years
ago, and just send a robotic ship
to one of these lakes and just,
you know, troll for microbial life
that might be in those lakes.
Those lakes are not liquid water
of course; daytime temperatures
on Titan are minus 290 degrees.
Those lakes are methane and ethane
-- liquid methane and ethane.
But still, that's hydrocarbon
chemistry.
So that's one way to find life.
And we will be doing experiments
like that in the next 20 years;
it all depends on funding obviously.
But that might be the
way to find it.
Another way to find
it is to sniff it out.
This is horse number two.
By simply looking at the light
bouncing off the atmospheres
of planets around other stars.
These are the spectra of
some planets you all know.
On the top is Venus, the middle one
if Earth, the bottom one is Mars.
You see all three planets show,
you know, obvious evidence
of carbon dioxide, consequently,
the presence of SUV's.
But you also see that for Earth
there is an absorption line
of oxygen.
Right, O3 there, ozone.
And also water vapor.
And these in the right combination
-- in the right combination,
these together with CO2 would
indicate the presence of biology,
at least biology as we know it.
So, you could build a telescope,
and in fact the James Webb
Telescope will be able to do some
of this anyhow for
some nearby exoplanets.
Just look at the light
bouncing off the planet.
You know, the planet only has
to be one pixel in the picture.
But take some of that light,
put it through a prism and see
if you see these absorption
lines due to these elements.
So that's sniffing out life.
James Webb for some
planets anyhow is expected
to be able to find these things.
And maybe even the so-called
red edge of spectral feature
in the infrared that would
indicate chlorophyll.
You know, I don't know
what's there Bob,
but it looks like they have lettuce.
So that would be -- again, the
time scale for this is, again,
on the order of a few decades.
And this may pay off.
Now I point out that these are
where the major efforts are
on the assumption that actually
these could find microbial life,
and the assumption there which
is probably not a bad one is
that microbial life is
much more commonplace
than more complex,
say, intelligent life.
I like to provoke people like
Mary Voytek and so forth, others,
by saying that all the big money
is going to look for stupid life,
because again, the assumption being
that stupid life is more
common than intelligent life.
And that's a statement that
you can verify by walking
around your own neighborhoods.
Okay. I get immediate objection,
I'm sure Mary would object,
bacteria are not stupid, but
on the other hand, you know,
they don't do well on quiz shows.
Okay. The third approach to finding
life in space of course is to look
for intelligent life, that's
kind of my day job these days,
and that's to try and eavesdrop on
signals the way Jodi Foster tried
in the movie "Contact"
and other ways.
I'm going to give you some
other ways to doing that.
And that I also think I will
spend some time on that.
This is an idea that goes back
actually to the 19th Century,
something Steve Dick knows about.
There were proposals in the 1850's
and the 1860's in Europe to try
and signal our buddies on Mars,
example, with big lanterns,
or geometric forms and the
landscape, and stuff like that.
That was actually a fairly
legitimate approach except
for the fact that Mars
probably doesn't have any life
that you could, you know -- would
just respond to the signals.
But in 1960, Frank Drake, who is
still busy in this field by the way,
still active, Frank Drake
used this antenna --
this is a photo I made
a couple of years ago --
300, it's not even 300 miles,
about 150, 200 miles from here
in Green Bank, West Virginia.
And pointed it in the direction of
two nearby stars hoping to eavesdrop
on radio signals that the
aliens might be broadcasting.
He didn't hear anything.
He spent two weeks doing this.
Actually, he did hear something but
it turned out to be the US military
and that did not count as
extraterrestrial intelligence.
But the idea here is nonetheless
demonstrably practical.
This is a one-line calculation where
you can show that even the kinds
of transmitters we routinely
build; you could send signals
that could bridge the
distances between the stars.
So that's an interesting
thing, and that suggests
that no matter what they're doing,
some of them may be producing this
kind of radio noise and we ought
to be looking for it,
and we are doing that.
Now let me just make a point here
that I think is important perhaps
to the philosophy of this, and
that is this is not science
in the traditional sense.
You know, when you're in middle
school they teach you that, well,
with science you have an hypothesis,
and you design an experiment to try
and falsify the hypothesis.
If you can prove it wrong then
at least you know we can get rid
of that hypothesis and I'll
come up with another one.
Okay. But that's not
what this is about.
That's not what SETI's about.
Because there's no way you can
prove they're not out there.
Right? Didn't hear them Bob,
I guess they're not out there.
Well it doesn't work.
There are a million reasons that
you might not hear them even
if they are out there.
There's no way to prove
they're not out there.
The only hope is that the experiment
could prove that they are out there.
So this is not traditional
science, this is exploration,
and that point has
already been made by Steve.
Exploration -- and this is
just an artist rendition
of finding Antarctica.
For centuries people sat around in
the bars of Europe drinking a lot
of beer and postulating the idea
that maybe there's a big continent
at the bottom of the world, and you
could have all the beer you want
but in the end you had
to do the experiment,
you had to send some
ships down there and look.
And that's what SETI is, it's
exploration -- it's exploration.
No way to falsify it but there
is some chance that you may prove
that your idea was correct.
Okay, this is the Allen
Telescope Array.
This is what we use at the SETI
Institute to look for signals.
There are 42 antennas there.
The idea was to build 350.
I'm not going to say much more
about the Allen Telescope Array.
Most of you are familiar
with the SETI Enterprise
and what it is that
we're trying to do.
I'm trying to start a new plan
there to look at red dwarf stars,
thousands of them, many thousands
of them, because I really do think
that much of the life
in the universe may be
around these little runny guys.
And in fact, red dwarf
stars, they're small.
They're small, but that means --
and they're also not very bright,
in a sense like some of my brothers,
but on the other hand by being kind
of dim stars it turns out that
they last a very long time.
They don't have a whole lot
of fuel because they're small,
but they go through the fuel very
slowly, it's like VW Beetles.
Okay? So, but why look
at red dwarfs?
Well, here's the reason.
Three-quarters of all
stars are red dwarfs,
so that means if you can only look
at a finite sample like 10,000
of them, on average they're going
to be [inaudible] closer to you
than another kind of
star, like sun-like stars.
And closer is better because
any signals would be stronger.
So that's one thing.
They're twice as close actually,
so that means four times
the signal strength.
A lot of them are suspected
of having habitable worlds
and the other thing is because
of the fact that they go
through their fuel so slowly
every red dwarf ever born
since the Big Bang is
still burning today.
None of them is more
than a teenager.
Okay, they're all still alive.
They last for billions of years.
And this is the one
example I can think
of where being older
might be better,
because if you're older then there's
been more time for intelligence
to develop and perhaps even
very sophisticated intelligence.
So these guys on average
are billions
of years older than sun-like stars.
So, that's the motivation
for doing this.
Let me give you just
some other ideas
about how you might do
any and all of this.
One thing to consider is well, look.
The universe has been around
three times as long as the Earth.
Okay, so there could
be societies out there
that are literally billions of
years more advanced than we are,
and maybe they self-destruct long
before they get to that level but,
you know, that's just the sunny kind
of optimism you expect here in DC.
You know, it does suggest
though that there's some sort
of distribution of ages of
societies and maybe the thing
to do is develop strategies that
could find the societies that are
on the high end of
that distribution,
the ones that might be
hundreds of thousands, millions,
maybe even billions
of years more advanced
than our own current
technological level.
Because they make a lot of noise.
They may be easier to
find than trying to look
for analogs of ourselves.
Obviously you're not going
to find Neanderthals;
they didn't build radio
transmitters, but look for things
that are very, very
much more advanced.
Okay. Now, one suggestion,
a perennially popular one is
the one from Freeman Dyson.
He said, "Look, if you're really
in advanced society
you've got energy needs,
what you do is you take apart --
for example, we could
take apart Neptune, right,
nobody would complain,
it's not big in your lives.
Take apart Neptune and
rebuild it as this giant shell
around the sun outside the Earth's
orbit obviously and just collect all
that starlight, turn it into energy
and beam it back to the Earth's
so that everybody can power,
you know, their cellphones
or whatever it is they need for
the gusto-grabbing lifestyle.
The thing is that the outside of
this shell will be warm, waste heat.
We assume everybody in the universe
is subject to the second law
of thermodynamics so
there's a lot of waste heat.
Look for stars that have a lot of
waste heat, a lot of infrared."
There has been some
effort in that regard.
This is another idea.
Here's a Cepheid variable star.
They're very important in
astronomy but never mind that.
They're big, bright
stars that pulsate,
just slowly getting brighter and
then two days later they get dimmer
and then they get brighter
again, very regularly.
They're kind of very slowly
metronomes on the sky and Tony Zee,
who's a physicist at UC
Santa Cruz has suggested --
Santa Cruz or Santa Barbara?
It may be Santa Barbara actually.
Anyhow, Tony Zee has
suggested, "Look,
a really advanced society
would recognize
that these things can be seen from
millions, hundreds of millions
of light years away, these kinds
of stars, they're so bright.
Okay. Hubble found them back,
you know, in the early part
of the 20th Century
in nearby galaxies.
And they may shoot
high energy particles
into these Cepheid variables which
would change their [inaudible],
and suddenly they would hiccup,
and that would be a great signal
that could be seen galaxies
away that hey, we're here,
aim your radial telescopes here
because we also have a low-powered
radio signal that will send you the
"Encyclopedia Galactica" or whatever
it is that we want to send to you."
Okay. So that's something
else you could look
for and that's easy to do.
All you have to do is just look up
the periods of Cepheid variables,
astronomers keep track of those.
Easy. Another idea is just look for
excess heat in an entire galaxy.
Some civilization that's
so advanced it's able
to coral the energy
reserves of its own galaxy.
There's been some effort there, too.
Now let me just point out, I
occasionally consult for movies
and one of the questions
they always ask is --
they ask what will the aliens look
like and what weapons do they have?
They always ask that [laughter].
What weapons do they have?
I mean, it's crazy, right?
It's like asking Julius Caesar what
do you think the US military will be
using in the 21st Century.
Well they'll have big
spears and you know.
But the other thing they ask
is what will they be like,
and in the movies they're
always soft,
squishy guys that are generally
fairly ugly, don't wear any clothes,
and have no sense of humor.
That's all wrong, time scale
argument, and many people
in the audience have
considered this.
Look at what's happening
in our own society.
1900 we invent radio, so
suddenly we go on the air,
we might be able to be found.
Okay. But in half a century
after that we already
had computers, right?
They took a whole room and so forth
but the basic architecture
was already established.
Okay. And the assumption, and it
may be wrong, but the assumption is
that by the middle of this
century, maybe by the end
of this century we will
have developed strong AI.
We will have invented our
successors, thinking machines.
It's probably the most
important thing
that this generation is going to do.
Okay. I don't know whether
we become their pets or --
I don't know what happens but that's
not the subject of this discussion.
The point is that going
from inventing radio
to inventing thinking machines is
very short, a few centuries at most.
Okay. So that means that the time
during which you might find aliens
that are biological
is really quite short.
Right? That could be very short.
And that the dominant intelligence
in the cosmos may be non-biological,
and that should affect
the way we look for it.
Unfortunately I don't
know how it affects it
so we're going to go
from that to that.
Finally, what happens
if we find a signal?
This whole symposium is about that
so I will only offer
my generally uninformed
and soporific comments on that.
This is what Hollywood figures
will happen if we find a signal.
Everybody will get excited.
There you see, well, a couple of
guys in the movie "The Arrival"
which had the bad form to appear
two weeks before "Independence Day"
so nobody went to see it, but it
was actually an interesting film.
And these guys are sitting
around looking bored.
They have a SETI experiment and
then suddenly they see a spike
on an oscilloscope, get all excited,
and as you can see
they're all excited here.
That's a Hollywood version.
The actual version
looks more like this.
This is a photo I made in 1997
back at the SETI institute
when we thought we had found
a signal that might be it.
Very interesting.
I made this photo 3:30
in the morning.
I was so nervous I couldn't sit down
and so I just went
around taking pictures.
But we thought this might be it
and I kept waiting for somebody
to call up, somebody from the
Pentagon, from the White House.
Right? Even the local
mayor or Mountain View.
Nobody called up, nobody cared,
and there's no policy of secrecy,
people are immediately
emailing all their friends,
"Hey, we got this signal."
Nobody cared.
Amazing. Nobody cared.
Until about 9:30 in the morning
I was half asleep at my desk
and the phone rang and it was Bill
Broad, one of the science writers
from the New York Times , and
he said, "What about that signal?"
He already knew about
it in New York.
They knew about it in New York.
That's important.
There's no policy of secrecy,
everybody knows right away.
This is just a little
graph I made for some paper
where it just shows
you our confidence
in a signal as a function of time.
But the only thing you need to
take back from this is the fact
that if you find a signal you
think is real it's going to be
at least five or seven
days before you believe it.
Okay. The public figures
that nobody will tell you.
Just ask the public what do you
think will happen if you were
to find an intelligent
signal from space
and they assume the
government would cover it
up because you couldn't
handle the news.
Right? Presumably you would
say, "That's it, Ralph.
I'm going to riot in the streets."
It's goofy and we know it's goofy
from the historical presence.
If this is 100 years ago, 100 years
ago, you know, Percival Lowell,
a very accomplished guy, degree from
Harvard in Mathematics and so forth,
he felt that there was this vast,
hydraulic civilization on Mars.
You all know that story, and this
is just an article from the paper.
But the public was not
rioting in the streets
about this they just thought
it was sort of interesting.
Thirty-five million miles
away there are Martians.
Oh yeah, that's interesting.
So how's your mom?
You know? It was -- okay.
If they do get in touch --
I think that if we pick up a signal
there are really only two kinds
of signals it could be.
Category one, they recognize
that they may be hundreds,
thousands of light years away.
Consequently, if they, "Hi,
look, we're the Klingons.
Would you like to join
our book club?"
Right? It might take 1000 years
for that signal to reach us,
another thousand years for
our reply to get back to them,
and then another thousand
years for the response to that.
You know, "Please repeat that."
Or whatever they say.
So, that is such a long timescale,
and they will be aware of that,
they would -- this is scenario one
-- they'll just send everything.
Send everything at once, the way
the Roman Empire has done to you.
They sent everything.
It took 2000 years to get to you.
It's interesting, you
can't talk back, right,
but they give you everything.
That's category one.
Category two is slightly different.
And that is this and it derives
from the fact that I don't think any
of the aliens know we're here yet.
One-third of the American population
thinks the aliens are here, right,
and they're here to protect us
from ourselves, or you know,
environmental degradation
and stuff like that.
They don't know about any of that.
We've only been broadcasting high
frequency, high-powered signals
since the Second World War.
That means almost for sure
no society has heard us yet.
So why are they sending
all this stuff to us now?
Why would they spend a lot of
time directing a signal to us?
Scenario two says they won't
until they know we're here.
So all they do is light up the
sky for a fraction of a second,
you know, every 10 minutes,
every 10 hours, every 10 weeks,
until they get our attention.
We send something back and
then they know we're here,
and then they send the material.
So it would just be a
very simple one bit ping,
"Look at this spot on the sky."
What would we know right
away if we found a signal?
There are very few things
we would know right away.
Our equipment is not
designed to pick up messages.
That requires a very
short time constant,
for technical reasons
we can't do that.
We would know where they are.
We would know which
star system they are.
Everybody would be trying to find
planets around that star system.
We would know how far away they are.
That's just traditional astronomy.
We would know a few astronomical
facts about the length of the year,
the length of the day on the basis
of the frequency change
in the signal.
Those are all very simple
things that's all we would know.
We would not know whether
their complexions were grey,
green, or anything else.
And just some salient points that
I think are of interest in this
to begin with, the whole idea that
we have this symposium to talk
about what would happen if this
exploration were to succeed is --
it's not unprecedented
but it's very unusual.
Right? I don't think Chris
Columbus sat around, you know,
having conferences, well, "Suppose
you trip across another continent
on your way to Japan, you know?
What would be the societal
consequences of that?"
To begin with there's no way
they could know what the societal
consequences were going to be,
certainly not in the long-term.
But secondly, nobody did that.
They didn't do it when they
were looking for Antarctica,
"What would be the consequences
of finding Antarctica?"
Right? So it's highly peculiar it
seems to me that we ask ourselves,
this is exploration,
what if we succeed?
What does that mean to Joe Sixpack?
Right? So that's point one.
Secondly, there's a highly
emotional debate about if we were
to find a signal
from extraterrestrial intelligence
should we broadcast back
or is that dangerous?
I won't go into that except to say
I think that's a silly argument,
personally, because it's easy
to demonstrate that any society
that could in fact come
here and ruin your whole day
by incinerating Earth or
whatever they're going to do.
Any society at that level
would be able to pick
up the signals we've been
broadcasting into space
since the Second World War.
[Inaudible] already know.
And in fact to restrict what we
transmit into space would require
that all subsequent generations
of Homo sapiens hide under a rock.
I think that's a very,
very bad idea.
So there you go, 10,000
generations of humans before us,
ours could be the first to
know, and I'll bet you all a cup
of coffee that'll happen.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you, sir.
Good morning, my name
is Jason Steinhauer.
I'm the program specialist
at the John W. Kluge Center,
and I'll sort of be playing the
role of Master of Ceremonies,
MC, for the next two days.
Sort of keeping the program
moving and making sure
that we're all on schedule.
So again, just a quick thank
you and really extreme gratitude
to Congressman Lamar Smith for his
introductory remarks this morning.
On a very busy morning
for Congressman.
We're so appreciative of his time.
And our thanks to Steven
as well, to Mary-Jane Deeb,
our interim director, and to Dan,
our colleague at the Kluge Center
for all their introductions
this morning.
And we will resume at
10:15 with our first panel.
So, thank you.
Well, welcome back.
Thank you all.
So, a word of note about
introductions and speaker bios.
Our speakers are, as Dan
mentioned this morning,
distinguished speakers
whose CV's could take
up an entire booklet each
of them individually.
And so, for the sake of keeping
the program moving and for ease
for you our audience and for
those watching on the livestream,
we do have bios of each of the
speakers in the program and then
of course more information can be
found out about them on our website
and on the internet more broadly.
We also have abstracts of all of
the papers on our website as well.
So if you're interested
in learning more about --
seeing the abstracts for all the
papers please visit our website
and we'll be tweeting our website
throughout the day on Twitter
as well so you can find it there.
So we're going to begin with our
first panel of the day, Approaches:
How Do We Frame the
Problem of Discovery.
The moderator for the
panel is Seth Shostak
from the SETI Institute
who you just heard.
We also have Steven Dick, who as
you heard earlier is our Baruch S.
Blumberg NASA Library of
Congress Chair in Astrobiology.
And I would also like
to mention and recognize
that our first astrobiology chair,
Dr. David Grinspoon is also here
with us in the audience today,
and of course we're greatly
appreciative for him being here.
We also have Clement Vidal,
from the University of Brussels,
and Iris Fry from Technion-Israel
Institute of Technology.
So again, full bios in the program,
full abstracts on our website.
And so, I'll turn it over to Steven
for the first paper of this panel.
The way these panels will function,
each of the speakers will
offer remarks from the podium
about their work, their
research, and their insights.
Those will go for approximately
15 to 20 minutes each,
and then following each of the
papers the moderator of the panel,
in this case Seth, will lead
a discussion to bring out some
of the intersections and perhaps
contradictions among the papers
and to elicit discussion
from you the audience.
So we will have Q and A
during the group discussion,
so if you have questions during
the individual presentations please
write them down or make notes
on your program and hold them
until the audience Q and A.
And we will have one microphone
circulating the room for audience Q
and A, and Seth will work to call
on people and we just remind you
to please keep your
questions concise
and always we prefer questions.
If you do have a statement to
make please make that statement
and then allow the panel to respond.
So, I think that covers everything.
Once again, we are tweeting
@preparetodiscover and @klugecenter.
And without further ado,
turn it over to Steven.
>> Steven J. Dick: Thank you, Jason.
Well Seth is always a hard
act to follow but I'll try.
So, part of my work here
at the Library of Congress
as Blumberg Chair this year
has been to write a book
on the societal impact of
discovering life beyond Earth
and how to prepare
ourselves for that discovery.
Let's see, so here's an
outline of what I'm working on.
I'm about three-quarters
of the way finished
and I've only got a month to go.
So I've got a lot of work to do yet.
But my goal for this meeting
has been to gather scholars
from around the world to give their
expert opinion on these matters
because no one person can be an
expert on a broad array of things
that we're talking about
here over the next two days.
But this interdisciplinarity is one
of the great things
about astrobiology.
So you'll see a parallel between
the program over the next two days
and the book that I'm going
to be talk about here.
So, as I started to tackle this
problem the first question I had
to ask is how can you even
approach such a far-out subject?
So I'm going to spend the
next 20 minutes talking only
about this first part,
the approaches.
The critical issues and the
potential impacts we'll be talking
about over the next two days.
So, let's start with this slide.
The three approaches
that I would like to talk
about are history,
discovery, and analogy.
In other words, history, examining
the reaction when people thought
that life had been discovered.
Discovery, looking at what the
nature of scientific discovery is,
and analogy using past
events as guidelines.
So let's start with history.
I list here at least six cases
where we thought we had
discovered life in the past.
And you can see them there,
the Moon Hoax, Canals of Mars,
Lowell you just heard about,
the War of the Worlds, Pulsars,
the Viking Landers, the Mars Rock.
I could spend the entire
lecture on any one of those
but let me just say a
few words about each one.
The Moon Hoax resulted from a series
of six stories published serially
in the New York Sun
in August of 1835.
And although according to
those articles the astronomer,
John Herschel, observing from
South Africa, had observed this.
If you can see that.
Had actually observed that.
This is from the Library of Congress
Princeton Photograph Division
as it appeared in the
New York Sun in 1835.
Large winged creatures, and if you
could see the smaller ones you'll
see all manner of other creatures,
but these creatures
were seen gesticulating
and therefore thought
to be intelligent.
So that's pretty good
for a telescope, right?
It mattered not that no telescope on
Earth could have seen such a thing.
It mattered not that the
entire series was a product
of a fevered imagination.
What mattered was that the upstart
New York Sun quickly became the
most read newspaper in the world.
It turns out that scholars now know
that the author Richard Adams
Locke wrote the stories not
as a hoax but as a satire.
And what was he satirizing?
He was satirizing the people
who thought there were
inhabitants everywhere,
including one particular astronomer
by the name of Thomas Dick,
no relation as far as I know.
But Thomas Dick had arrived at a
figure of 21 trillion inhabitants
in the solar system,
not including the sun.
So that -- this was supposed
to be a satire about that.
But of course people
took it seriously.
So, we arrive at our
first lesson from history,
in the short-term the facts
will particularly matter.
What the media says will matter,
the perception and not the reality.
And that's also true of the
second case the War of the Worlds.
Halloween eve 1938, the famous
Orson Welles broadcast of the War
of the Worlds based on H.G.
Welles late 19th Century novel.
H.G. Welles had it taking place in
London; Orson Welles relocated it
to New Jersey, just an hour
south of New York City.
And so this hour-long broadcast
was presented as a series
of news bulletins which many
took to be real despite warnings
that it was just a
broadcast -- a drama.
So it's the reaction to this event
which makes it an important part
of radio history and a special
interest for those of us
who are studying the reaction to
possible extraterrestrial contact
in its most extreme
form of direct contact.
There's no doubt that the reaction
was considerable with some thinking
that interplanetary
conflict had actually begun
with Martian invasion, but
subsequent studies have shown
that it wasn't really the
panic and the mass hysteria
that it was portrayed to be.
In fact, the consensus
now among scholars is
that there was very
little panic at all.
So how did that idea get around?
Well, according to the
scholarship now there's no doubt
that this was reported in
newspapers as a panic but it turns
out it was based mostly
on anecdotal reports
and the scholars have concluded
that these stories represented
an irresistible attempt
by the print media to rebuke
the new -- the fledgling radio,
an upstart rival source
of news and advertising,
making it seem untrustworthy
and unreliable.
Well of course in the process they
didn't do themselves any good either
but they perpetuated this myth which
has been very difficult to excise.
In fact, if you saw the "American
Experience" on PBS just last year,
the 75th Anniversary of this,
they were still portraying
it as [inaudible].
So these things once they get
out in the popular culture
are difficult to excise.
So anyway, between the Moon
Hoax and the War of the Worlds,
that's two strikes
out for the media.
But the third event is much more
serious and I want to say a bit more
about that, and that's
the announcement,
and many of you will remember
this almost 20 years ago now,
of the Mars Rock and the claim
that it contained very small,
very tiny fossils called
nanofossils.
In other words, proof that there
had been past life on Mars.
So, some of you remember,
press conferences held
at NASA Headquarters
down the street here.
President Clinton spoke from the
South Lawn of the White House.
Vice President Gore
convened a space summit.
Here's one artifact from that.
You can't see that in the
back but this is the letter
from the White House inviting people
to this meeting in December of 1996
to discuss what the impact was
going to be if this were true.
Congressional hearings were held.
The numerous claims and
counterclaims were made in the press
and in the scientific journals, and
theologians opined on the meaning
of it all, and of course
the media went wild, again.
So entire books have been written
on this episode and I can't go
over it all here, but suffice
it to say that today we know
that those Mars rocks were real,
which is astonishing enough.
We do have Mars rocks here on Earth.
But the consensus is that
those fossils are not real.
And in the end this case of the Mars
rock offers the most robust example
I think in the modern era of what
might happen following a claim
of life beyond Earth,
even if it's only fossils.
Some people say there's no --
there'll be no reaction if we find
no microbes, but here's a case
where they were fossils
and people went wild.
So I think there will
be quite a reaction.
The reaction of government
institutions, the media,
and the public will
occur side by side
with the reaction among scientists
who will subject the discovery
to withering criticism.
That's what scientists do.
The media will play an
important role both in reporting
and sensationalizing any
claims, and of course these days
with the internet and other social
media the news of the discovery
like this would spread like
wildfire in the 21st Century.
But as the Mars rock demonstrates
the final conclusion will be far
from immediate.
It'll be an extended process
which I claim is characteristic
of all discoveries,
and that brings me
to my second approach of discovery.
So I want to say something about
the nature of discovery in science
in general, and for that
there's no better source
than this great book called
Discovery and Classification
in Astronomy , where I show
one of the main conclusions is
that you don't just point your
telescope and oh, there it is,
I made a great discovery.
It's always an extended process
over a period of weeks, years,
or even decades where you have
various stages of detection,
interpretation, and understanding.
There's no such thing as
immediate discovery in astronomy
and I think there's no such
thing as immediate discovery
in any of science, really.
So, you have those three stages
and I think the same thing would
be true certainly of a discovery
of extraterrestrial
life in whatever form.
It's even possible we've
already seen the signal
but we don't recognize it yet.
It's possible we've
made the detection
but don't interpret it
properly, don't understand it.
So, something will be detected,
there'll be years or decades
of interpretation and full
understanding will take even longer.
And those are very important
points if we're going to talk
about the impact of discovery.
Another essential point while
we're talking about discovery is
that there are many
discovery scenarios,
and I just don't have time
to go over these in detail.
You may not even be able -- here's
the anatomy of discovery, detection,
interpretation, and understanding.
It has an extended process.
Discovery scenarios, of
course you can divide them
into microbial discoveries and
intelligent life discoveries.
They could be discovered on Earth or
off Earth, directly or indirectly.
Most of the effort
these days is going
to this bottom what I
call encounter type three
where you have indirect
extraterrestrial discovery.
That's what we're looking for,
robotic exploration
and that sort of thing.
The same thing with intelligent
life discovery scenarios.
It could be on the Earth, off
the Earth, direct or indirect.
The encounter type one there could
be UFOs, which some people consider
to be extraterrestrial space ships,
that sort of thing,
most of us don't.
But again, most of the effort is
going to encounter type three there
which is what Seth talked about
this morning, for example,
radio transmissions coming from
another planet around another star.
So, all of you science
fiction fans will recognize
that there are many
science fiction --
you probably can't see this from
the back either, but there are lots
of science fiction about
what the impact might be
if we make extraterrestrial
contact under all
of these various scenarios.
There's very little written
on what the impact might be
in science fiction if you
make a microbial discovery,
although one of our speakers here,
Dirk Schulze-Makuch has written
on some science fiction on that.
You'll be hearing from
him this afternoon.
So, a lot more could be said
about the nature of discovery
and the discovery process,
but the point here is
that the reaction will be extended
and will depend very
much on the scenario.
And this brings me to my
third approach, analogy.
So I know what you're thinking,
analogy is a wishy-washy kind
of an argument, why
even consider that?
What kind of a vague
approach is that?
So the first thing I
want to do here is insist
that analogy is not just
some wishy-washy form
of reasoning you use
when you're desperate
and lack any other form of argument.
Some of you know about
Douglas Hofstadter,
the Pulitzer Prize winner
of Godel, Escher, Bach .
Just written a very thick book.
The subtitle is Analogy as the
Fuel and Fire of Thinking .
We use analogy all the time.
And he says, "Analogy is anything
but a little blip, it's the,
it's everything or
very nearly everything
in his view in terms of cognition.
We're using analogy all the time."
Now, you have to be very careful.
Anthropologist Kathryn Denning has
said, "The problem with analogies is
that they are highly
persuasive, inherently limited,
and easily overextended."
And that certainly is true.
We have to use them very cautiously
and certainly we cannot
predict the future with them.
But what you can do is lay out
various scenarios and guidelines.
And so in my work I take
a look at some of these --
what analogies might be appropriate.
But I also want to point out
that astrobiologists themselves
use analogy.
In fact, astrobiology couldn't
exist as a discipline I think
if you didn't use analogy.
There are some of the analogies.
The conditions on Earth
compared to some Mars,
and extremophiles and
that sort of thing.
So if scientists -- if natural
scientists can use analogy then
social scientists can use analogies,
and so that's what we're doing here.
But what kind of analogies?
Well, supposing we discover
microbes what might an analogy be?
I think the discovery of
microbes represents a revolution
in biology depending on the
nature of the microbes found.
So taking this as our starting
point you could ask what discoveries
in the history of biology might
approximate such discoveries --
such extraterrestrial discoveries.
More specifically, if you assume
that a discovery would change
our view of life what discoveries
in biology have changed
our view of life?
Well there are lots of
those, [inaudible] evolution
by natural selection, or
the role of DNA in genetics,
the discovery of extremophile
microorganisms, and so on.
But maybe there's nothing closer
than the actual discovery
of microbes.
There was a time when we didn't
know microbes existed on the Earth.
And so it was only in the late
17th Century that Robert Hook
and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
discovered this microbial world,
so you can look at the
reaction of what happened there.
There was a sensational for a while,
this Micrographia
book was a bestseller,
showing these little
microbes and other things
through the early microscopes.
But progress in microscopes
was very slow.
So it was only in the
19th Century when we began
to realize how important
microbes were for health
and all kinds of other things.
So today we know about
the importance of microbes
but it took a long time
to figure that out,
and the same thing may
happen with other microbes
when we discover microbes
beyond the Earth.
Another favorite analogy
when you move
onto extraterrestrial intelligence
is what's called the culture
contact analogy.
In the case that we make contact
with extraterrestrial intelligence,
either direct or indirect.
And of course we have many examples
of culture contacts on Earth,
usually with unhappy effects, and
usually that's as far as it goes.
So here is an image
from the National Museum
of the American Indian
just down the street here,
which celebrates its 20th
Anniversary this week,
showing some of the several
dozen first contacts made
between Europeans and
the New World as part
of the Western Age of Discovery.
One particular example is Cortes
and the Aztecs in Mexico in 1519,
which you always hear about.
And here is an image from --
you really need to go
during lunchtime upstairs,
one flight up here, and see this
from the Jay Kislak Collection
of the History and Cultures
of the Early Americas.
These are 17th Century
paintings of that first contact.
And if you can see this the
first contact was not so bad
but it very quickly as we all know
devolved into this, the destruction
of Tenochtitlan by
Cortes and his troops.
By the way, while you're looking
at these upstairs you should
also see the Waldseemuller map,
the first map, the 1507
map with the word "America"
on it for the first time.
There's some great
exhibits just upstairs here.
But anyway, this example --
this is just one example,
so it's very difficult to -- very
dangerous to draw conclusions
from a sample of one, and in fact
outside the Western tradition there
are other models for contact.
Such as this one with the Chinese
Treasure Fleet in the 15th Century.
In fact, these seven trips,
seven voyages in the 15th Century
resulted not in destruction
of cultures but in new ideas and
although they did exact some tribute
but the scholarship these days shows
that these were much more
moderate culture contacts
than the ones before.
This is amazing; you could
easily get sucked into this.
As you can see the image there, the
size of the Chinese ships compared
to Columbus's ship down
there, extremely large.
So these were not necessarily for --
it's not the kind of ship
you would use for trying
to attack other civilizations.
Columbus's ships which were these
small caravels were much better
for exploration but were also used
for destruction, as we just saw.
Now one of the most trenching
criticisms of this is
that you're dealing with the
same species, Home sapiens.
So what kind of an analogy is that?
And that's a good criticism.
So one other possible analogy is
the analogy of modern Homo sapiens
with Neanderthals, because we
know that Neanderthals overlapped
with Homo sapiens over
a period of time.
How do we know that?
Well, 3% of the genome of
most of us is Neanderthal.
So we know there was
interaction there.
Unfortunately we don't know much
else about that interaction,
but one anthropologist wrote
that this culture contact would
be a particular good analogy
because Neanderthals had a
completely different sensibility
than we had as Homo sapiens.
So that may be closer to the
kind of interaction we would have
if there were actual
culture contacts.
So what are the lessons
learned from culture contacts?
It's not that a society --
a more advanced society would
necessarily destroy a more inferior
one as indicated both by the
Chinese case and also by the case
of Jesuits among the
American Native Indian tribes.
Though the destruction of
course was real in some
of these culture contacts
we can't conclude that even
if it's physical contact that
destruction would be the outcome.
I think more illuminating
are the communication
and the cultural interactions
which include both positive
and negative effects, and if
you take any one interaction
as an exemplar almost any
lesson could be learned,
but it's far better to learn from
the entire set of experiences,
or better yet to learn the
collective lessons common
to all those contact experiences.
So, I think the determination
of characteristics common
to all culture contacts is a
respectable research program
that could pay dividends.
So, just a couple more analogies.
Supposing it's a kind
of analogy that --
or kind of process that Seth
was talking about this morning
where you have a transmission.
This is what I call the
decipherment/translation analogy.
One particularly good one I think is
the transmission of Greek knowledge
to the Latin West by
way of the Arabs
in the 11th and 12th Centuries.
But of course the problem there is
that we already knew the languages
and people have pointed out that it
may be more like the decipherment
of the Mayan Glyphs or
Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Or if you want to bring it
more into the modern world
and if you're getting
information flow from this,
the "Encyclopedia Galactica" that
Seth mentioned, then you might look
at analogies such as Guttenberg,
the Printing Press,
or even the internet.
I mean if you ask there you
see how difficult it is to try
and decide what the
impact is going to be.
What's the impact of the
internet been on modern culture?
Very complicated process, right?
Okay. So, finally, I would say
there's the worldview analogy.
Even if an extraterrestrial
message is not discovered,
even if we have a discovery
of microbial life,
I think our worldview
might change over time.
And of course there's
a lot of literature
in how worldviews have changed
in the wake of scientific events
like the Copernican theory,
the Darwinian Theory,
and even the current Hubble/Shapley
theory of the universe,
or even seeing the imagery from
the Hubble Space Telescope.
What effect does that
have on culture?
So, I want to claim that -- I want
to claim that analogy can be useful
but it must not be so general
as to be meaningless nor
so specific as to be misleading.
The middle, what I call
the Goldilocks ground is
where the analogies may
serve as useful guideposts,
generating scenarios
and setting limits.
So, just some concluding
points there to summarize.
The lessons of history of course are
difficult to learn and ambiguous.
History, discovery, and
analogy however offer a
grounding inexperience.
We can't make predictions.
We're only looking at
scenarios and guidelines.
Analogy can be as powerful in
history as it is in science.
The discovery of extraterrestrial
life might be unique,
it might well be unique and there
really is no analogy, but if you say
that then, well, we
just throw up your hands
and you can't even talk about it.
And finally even if no life is found
these are good thought experiments.
So, I've only -- I think
my time is well up --
I've only summarized the very
top level of these arguments
and this is only just the first
little section of my book,
but we can discuss more about
this in the roundtable at the end.
Thanks.
[ Applause ]
>> Clement Vidal: So,
hello everybody.
Thank you, Steve for
all the invitation.
I'm very glad to be here.
Today I'll be talking about
the idea of silent impact.
The worldview significance
of discovering non-communicative
extraterrestrials.
So, of course we are used to some
pictures of extraterrestrials,
which are very anthropomorphic, but
what if they don't look like us?
And what if when we discover
extraterrestrials there is
no communication?
How would it impact our worldviews
to find non-communicative
extraterrestrials?
[Inaudible] I would
like to address here.
I will first speak about the
no communication argument,
and then elaborate on the ideas
that discovery will be slow,
like previous great
scientific discoveries,
and then I will explore
some concepts
to understand the worldview impact.
So this is an important slide here.
It shows the technological
progress through time.
So it's an argument that
Seth also made earlier,
is that we are somewhere in the
middle, in a phase transition
between technical importance
and technical omnipotence.
So if we apply -- if we take
this idea seriously and we assume
that our civilization
is typical then it means
that other civilization will
be in the same situation.
So it means that either we
will find primitive life
or very advanced life, which uses
analogy from stars for example.
But we are very unlikely
to find siblings,
to find civilizations at our level.
So strangely enough the [inaudible]
this thinking is the principle
of mediocrity.
We have well understood
it for space.
We know that the center of the Earth
is not the center of the universe,
neither is the sun, neither is
our galaxy, or even the clusters
of the galaxy or other
centers somehow.
But we need also to apply
to principle of mediocrity
to our evolutionary time.
There are other arguments
which suggest
that there will be no communication.
There could be ethical
barriers to communication,
such as noninterference
directive in Star Trek.
Advanced civilizations
are not allowed
to contact less advanced ones.
There might be motivational bias.
For example, why don't we spend
time whispering to bacteria
or plants that E=MC squared.
It doesn't even make
sense to try it.
So there are, as Seth also
mentioned, there are other ways
to look for non-communicative
extraterrestrials.
For example, Dyson spheres, or
signs of stellar engineering
of trying to find artifacts.
But then of course if we don't have
communication we have the issue
of how do we prove it?
How do we prove that we
have found extraterrestrials
if we can't communicate with them?
I would like to say that it's
possible to have proof even
if it's less direct if we
are able to make predictions
out of the assumption that we
have discovered extraterrestrials.
So how long will it
take to establish proof
of non-communicative
extraterrestrials?
It will likely be slow, and there
will be resistances of course
which [inaudible] scientific
resistances.
Of course skepticism will be
at its highest, maybe even more
if the suggestion is
already in our data.
Like if today we reopen the
case of Martian meteorites,
there will be resistances because
we think we have understood it.
There are some recent trends in
astrobiology, such as genomic-SETI
that Paul Davis and
others before had proposed,
as to look for messages in the DNA.
And also there is my own Starivore
hypothesis, which is a speculation
about binary star systems which
could be extraterrestrial life.
So, again, why would we
reinterpret existing data?
We need to find predictions.
So, yes, history supports
a slow discovery.
Morrison said that the discovery
of extraterrestrials will be
like agriculture and
not like America.
It will be a slow and long process.
And previous claims were
also very ambiguous.
For a long time, like the
canals of Lowell, we laugh today
when we see the pictures but it was
ambiguous during [inaudible] years.
It is [inaudible].
And also the controversial
Martian meteorites which took time.
So now I go to the third
thought of my talk,
which is the worldview impact.
I would like to propose a --
suggest a model with nine dimensions
of impact, which I will illustrate
with three silent-impact scenarios.
And then I will examine
some benefits and danger
of the biological worldview,
so the ideas that the
universe is full of life.
So if you start from the top
and clockwise the dimensions
I have proposed are first --
the first two are distance
and complexity.
And Harrison -- [inaudible]
Harrison argued
that these are the two
most important parameters.
I largely agree.
If we find on Earth something
very complex it has a huge impact,
whereas if we find
something very simple
and very far away the
impact will be much lower.
But there are also other factors
that we can propose
such as the size.
If the size is very
different from our own scale,
either the extraterrestrials are
very small that we can't see them,
or very big, in this
case it would be scary.
The living state obviously is
a very important parameter.
If it's alive or if
it's [inaudible].
The influence on Earth.
If we would find out that
extraterrestrials had an influence
on our past, such as in scenarios
such as directed [inaudible].
Our knowledge of them obviously
is a very important factor
for the impact.
If we know everything about them
or if we know almost nothing.
The less we know of course the
more distressing it could be.
There is also the parameter
of their knowledge of us.
If they know everything about us
and we know nothing about them it's
of course -- it has of
course a great impact.
They're intent, if
they are [inaudible].
And their communicative intent, if
they want to communicate or not,
or if they communicate at all.
So I would like to illustrate this
with three silent impact scenarios.
The first is, well, more or
less imaginative [inaudible].
The first is if we would find
an extinct primitive biosphere.
The second if we would have proof
that viruses are actually the result
of a directed panspermia,
they would have been sent
by an advanced civilization.
And an intermediate impact,
the starivore [inaudible],
so where we interpret
some binary star systems
as advanced civilizations.
And so just as a note if you take
[inaudible] complexity metric there
is an [inaudible] complexity between
the analogy which arrives on Earth
and the analogy used by
[inaudible] starivores.
So here you see now we can
start to draw spider shots.
So in the case of starivores
the complexity will be high.
The size will be big.
They would be living.
We don't know their influence on us.
We have limited knowledge
because we have some knowledge
about binary astrophysics but
not in this light of course.
We don't know what
they know about us.
We don't know their intent.
The communicative intent,
it could be that --
I speculate in my work that some
[inaudible] might become artificial
navigation systems, but
it's a big speculation.
And the distance is not too
far away, it's in our galaxy.
So the impact you see
how it will look like.
So now the [inaudible]
impact [inaudible] is a
primitive biosphere.
So you see that now the impact
is a rather small circle.
And the most -- I would say one
of the most impactful would be
viruses as extraterrestrials.
The distance would be very
near; it would be here on Earth.
The complexity of viruses
is actually pretty high,
we can't see them.
They are alive, although we
can discuss a bit on this.
The influence a lot evolution.
Our knowledge of them, well it's
reasonable but not complete.
And if we imagine that the
[inaudible] had a great knowledge
of us.
And if we imagine furthermore
that there is a malevolent intent
with spreading viruses,
well then you see
that the impact would be very high.
So my point with these examples is
that the impact will definitely
depend on which scenario happens.
So you need to imagine all possible
configuration of this spider diagram
and see what impact it
will have on society.
So now I turn to biological
worldview
and the benefits for science.
I would say the main benefit
is to universalize knowledge.
So we all scientists
and the physicists
who have universal ability of
knowledge the theories work as well
as here on Earth and very far away,
but with the astrobiological
enterprise we hope
to universalize all other domains
of knowledge, which is biology,
language, sociology, economy,
ethics, law, aesthetics,
theology, culture, eschatology.
And so this biological
worldview forces us to think
in universal terms because
each time we ask [inaudible]
but what would be beautiful
for an alien for example?
And so we are forced to step
out of anthropocentrism.
I would like to make an argument
that as we develop astrobiology we
will integrate more our knowledge
and we will also if you think
about responsible [inaudible] have
[inaudible] space then we really
need to coordinate as
a whole, as a planet.
So it contributes to make a
kind of planetary identity.
And it works also the
other way around.
Because we are getting more and
more globalized with the internet,
with connections of --
at the planetary scale.
We are kind of forming more
on a planetary identity
and this little guy on the
left would want to know
if there are others like him.
So it will simulate
also astrobiology.
But what if really we are alone
there is no really economic danger
because we still universalize our
knowledge and that's something good,
that's something all
theoreticians what to do.
Is there an economic danger --
well, we can ask these
questions the other way around.
What is the cost of not searching if
we then after a while are surprised,
and in the process we
also make new discoveries
and new transferable technologies?
There are some psychological dangers
such as what psychologists
call anchoring.
Just because we started to
invest in it we want to continue.
To continue like, when
you wait for the bus,
five minutes it's still
not coming, you wait,
and then another five
minutes, then you don't know
when to change your decision.
Some critics also have said that
it's a quasi-religious undertaking.
I think these criticisms are valid
but in the end the issue is
observational so if we want to try
to prove that we are alone, although
it might be impossible [inaudible],
we still need to explore.
And also if we go back to life
on Earth it means that we need
to make -- if we are really alone
in the universe it will be amazing
and then we will need to take
a maximum care of life here.
And I would even argue that we
have a duty of colonization,
but to spread life as well.
So my conclusion here
in this aspect is
that the astrobiological journey is
more important than the destination.
That by just searching we learn so
much and there is so much to learn
that maybe in the end we
learn more during the process
than after the real discovery.
So in conclusion I suggest
that the impact will be silent
in three different ways.
First because we are most likely
to find silent extraterrestrials
either microbial life
or very advanced stellar
civilizations.
Then the silence could
be also in the news
if the discovery is
a slow discovery.
There would be debate.
Yes there has been
life, no it's not life.
It would the same debate going 20,
30 years and people will get bored.
And so the news might come
without a hitch at the end.
But it's good news for our
psychology and worldview
which need time to adapt,
to digest such news.
And also I argue that it's desirable
to aim at silent absorption
by preparing for a wide range
of possible scenarios of impact
and also by developing
a more cosmic culture.
Thank you for your attention.
[ Applause ]
>> Iris Fry: Good?
Okay, can you hear me?
Yes. Yes. I'm very happy to be
here and I wish to thank Steve
for inviting me to participate
in this important symposium.
I will devote my short talk to
the philosophy of astrobiology,
in particular to its two
philosophical presuppositions,
the Copernican and
Darwinian assumption.
So, let me see.
Does astrobiology have a philosophy?
Yes, yes, it does.
Every scientific discipline
approaches its subject matter guided
by philosophical presuppositions.
We do not experience nature as
a clean slate, as a tabula rasa.
Rather, we rely on
general conceptions
of nature constructed gradually
by past experience and shaped also
by social and cultural factors.
I would like to give two prime
examples of such presuppositions.
First, natural laws apply
universally, and second,
natural processes depend
on natural causes and not
on the intervention of
a supernatural deity.
The philosophical and the
empirical-theoretical elements
of science are epistemologically
distinct.
Unlike theoretical-empirical
hypothesis,
philosophical presuppositions
make universal claims
that cannot be observed or tested.
Yet, these two elements,
the philosophical
and empirical-theoretical, are
not isolated from each other
and interact along a
historical timeline.
Philosophical conceptions
give direction to theoretical
and empirical study and
are being reinforced
by the results of such study.
This interaction during the last
few centuries led to the rise
of the evolutionary
naturalistic worldview.
Strongly established by now
this worldview underlies the
natural sciences.
It also validates the
study of origin of life
and more generally astrobiology.
So, let us now continue to the
two philosophical presuppositions
of astrobiology.
We don't have an answer yet to the
questions whether extraterrestrial
life exists, microbial,
multicellular, or intelligent.
We also don't have an answer yet
what was the specific mechanism
of the origin of life on Earth.
Research of these two major
questions presupposes first the
Copernican assumption, which says
that Earth is not uniquely chosen
for life, habitable conditions
might exist elsewhere.
And the Darwinian assumption,
life emerged here
by an evolutionary process and
might do so also elsewhere.
Obviously, these two
presuppositions grew historically.
As to the historical
development towards Copernicanism,
which I call from Copernicus
to Copernicanism,
this historical development
is very well studied
and documented mainly due to the
work of Steven, and Michael Crow,
and a few other historians
of science.
They deeply researched the
historical debate on the plurality
of world, the interaction
between science and philosophy
on these issues, and
we know from this work
that Copernicanism was well
established toward the end
of the 18th Century.
However, establishing
Copernicanism was a necessary
but not a sufficient condition
for the future scientific study
of extraterrestrial life.
Crucially, this scientific
study depended
on overcoming traditional
teleological-theological reasoning.
It was due to the rise of
the Darwinian assumption
that this traditional reasoning
was eventually abandoned.
Unlike the historical development
of Copernicanism the development
of the Darwinian presupposition
and its influence
on our subject were less
straightforward, less direct.
The belief that the universe is
populated by intelligent creatures,
what was called the
belief in pluralism,
was justified by teleological
and theological reasoning
up to the 19th Century.
The notion was that God
populated the universe
to further various purposes.
Also, anti-pluralism, the rejection
of the pluralistic
belief was justified
by theological anthropocentrism,
and the rejection
of materialistic evolution
up to the 19th Century.
William Whewell, the renowned
philosopher and scientist
of the 19th Century said, "That
man was divinely placed on Earth
and did not grow out of monkey."
Overcoming -- sorry.
We are now at the bottom
of the slide.
Overcoming design and teleology was
a complex and difficult process.
A stark example of this
difficulty and complexity is
of the evolutionist Alfred Russell
Wallace, who at the beginning
of the 20th Century
still argued that life
and mind were produced uniquely on
Earth by a superior intelligence.
It is also remarkable that at
the turn of the 19th Century,
at the beginning of the 20th
Century, Darwinism was still seen
to be on its death bed,
especially for the lack
of a viable theory of heredity.
Many biologists at the
time suggested purposeful
evolutionary mechanisms.
Natural selection was finally
accepted as the major mechanism
of evolution only in the
1930's to the 1940's.
Also importantly, rejecting
anthropocentrism,
dependent on the notion
established by Darwinism
that the human species
evolved as a branch on the tree
of life like other species.
So, the contribution of
Darwinism to the study
of extraterrestrial
life was two-fold.
Philosophically, by establishing
evolutionary processes naturalistic,
and by undermining teleology
and anthropocentrism.
And scientifically, by the
application of the mechanism
of evolution in a primitive form
to the emergence of life itself.
Current study of the emergence
of life is guided by the notion
that chemical prebiotic structures
could enable primitive reproduction,
variation, and selection, leading to
the first organized living systems.
This is a very important
point and I hope to be able
to devote a few words to
it in our panel discussion.
Yet, there are however,
current skeptics
who consider skeptically
the empirical aspects
of both Copernicanism and Darwinism.
In 2000, a book -- sorry, called
Rare Earth was published
by paleontologist Peter Ward
and astronomer Donald Brownlee,
who argued that the
evolution of multicellular,
especially intelligent
life, unlike microbial life
on other planets is
extremely improbable.
Their case was based
on the examination
of physical factors determining
the habitability of planets,
and second on the many
improbabilities involved
in the evolution of complex life.
Critics of the Rare Earth
hypothesis pointed out,
and I quote the renowned
geoscientist Kasting's --
that James Kasting, that
"the authors," referring
to the Rare Earth authors,
"consistently take the most
negative position on each issue."
And as Kasting said, "Alternative
positions often are equally viable."
Maybe we'll have time in our
discussion to try and figure
out why Ward and Brownlee chose
to take the most negative
option in each case.
Yet, I would like to point out that
despite its criticism the Rare Earth
hypothesis does assume the
Copernican-Darwinian philosophical
framework and presents and
empirical challenge to it.
So this thesis, the
Rare Earth thesis,
is not a philosophical
rival of astrobiology.
As an indication to that I
would like to quote things
that Peter Ward said in
an interview in 2013.
He was saying after some
discovery of extra-solar planet
which is the size of Earth.
And he said, "That their hypothesis,
the Rare Earth hypothesis
will be tested," he said,
"maybe with funding
within 50 years,"
when Earth-like planets
will be actually imaged
and analyzed spectroscopically.
So, as I said, he offers his
thesis as an empirical challenge
to Copernicanism and Darwinism.
On the other hand, the thesis
of The Privileged Planet
is another case altogether.
The Privileged Planet: How Our
Place in the Cosmos is Designed
for Discovery was
published in 2004
by astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez
and philosopher Jay Richards,
both Intelligent Design advocates.
They make two claims.
First, the Rare Earth argument,
based on similar scientific data
to the data of Ward and Brownlee.
And second, they contend, that
the Earth is among the best places
in the universe to make a wide
range of scientific discoveries
in geology, astronomy,
cosmology, et cetera.
According to Gonzalez and
Richards, this cannot be accidental.
For example, the Earth
and moon harmoniously
"produce the best solar
eclipses just
where there are observers
to see them."
This and other examples,
they believe,
demonstrate purposeful design for
life and scientific discovery.
Gonzalez and Richards are
disappointed with the Rare Earthers.
"They, Ward and Brownlee,
obviously challenge the letter
of the Copernican principle but
they don't challenge its spirit."
Instead of suggesting that Earth
is part of some cosmic design,
they "argue that these
conditions are still nothing more
than an unintended fluke."
So, having compared these two
thesis, the one scientific,
the other anything but, I would
like to say just a few words
on the scientific status
of astrobiology.
The historical development of the
naturalistic worldview depended
on the interplay between
empirical discoveries
and philosophical guiding
assumptions.
The response of the scientific
community to the publication
of the theory of evolution in
1859 and the response today attest
to this dynamics and to
the current strong status
of this worldview among scientists.
To those who are skeptical about
astrobiology, they describe it
as a science without a
subject matter, let me say,
skepticism toward the scientific
status of the fields of astrobiology
and the origin of life, I believe
reflects a misunderstanding
of the nature of science.
As evident from the history
of science many unknowns
became later fully known.
Such is the case with extrasolar
planets, and such might be the case
with the mechanism
of the origin of life
and with finding life elsewhere.
Moreover, as argued here,
the scientific validity
of a field is not determined
exclusively
by its empirical results, but also
by its philosophical
underpinning established
by the record of science.
And let me just end with a few words
of epistemological distinctions.
Unlike empirical hypothesis,
as I said,
"Philosophical assumptions making
universal claims cannot be tested."
This is true of both naturalistic
and super-naturalistic claims.
Yet, the two are not equivalent,
knowledge-wise or epistemologically.
Because of their natural content
specific hypothesis derived
from Copernican and Darwinian
assumptions can be examined
and can challenge or support
the general framework.
Supernatural claims on the other
hand present a scientific dead-end.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> Seth Shostak: Okay, well for the
next hour we're going to turn this
into an interactive discussion.
The panel will be --
the title of this is
"How do we frame the
problem of discovery?"
Now you've heard some
commentary by the three speakers
and since there has not been one
of these panels up here so far
in this conference we are
free to set the parameters
of how they're going to be, and
undoubtedly we'll do so incorrectly.
But I would like first just to
give the opportunity to each
of the speakers if they wanted
to say something further,
either commenting on something
other people have said,
or simply to restate their
position on this topic.
For a minute we'll do that and then
after that they'll start discussing
and very shortly thereafter I
want to open it up to the audience
so that you can grill these people
like cheese sandwiches and find out,
you know, the answers to questions
that are truly bothering you.
I would ask that this not
be a situation where you --
like I am just now
doing, speak endlessly.
You know, don't pontificate,
although Brother [inaudible]
may object to that.
Nothing against pontification
in general, but not up here.
Okay? So we can get
in as many questions
from the audience as possible.
Clement did you want to
say something for a minute?
>> Clement Vidal: No, no, no, no.
>> Seth Shostak: You can.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Yeah, yeah.
Okay. Iris?
>> Iris Fry: Yeah, I would just
like to say a few words
that -- am I heard?
>> Yeah.
>> Iris Fry: That I didn't
have a chance to speak
about during my lecture
which was indeed
on the philosophy of astrobiology.
More relevant to our subject and
in coherence with what you said
about the biological
worldview I think
that indeed astrobiology
has a very strong role
in enlightening the public.
First of all, I think that
taking into account the situation
that our world, our humanity
on this planet is right now,
the fact that astrobiology treats us
as a general "we," not as a nations,
ethnic tribes, different
religions, but as a common "we,"
I think is a very enlightening
project of astrobiology.
I think that this came out here,
that astrobiology has
indeed a very strong lesson
against anthropocentrism and
the fact that we are looking
out for microbes and our realization
that microbes and we humans are part
of the same tree of
evolution is very important.
So not only microbes are not stupid,
microbes are also very complex.
So when people speak about microbe
life, microbial life, complex life,
microbes are extremely complex.
So I think that teaching the
public to respect all creatures,
big and small, is very important.
And another lesson which is
very important, just in some --
in a maybe contradictory way,
because we still don't have
an answer to our quest,
I think that it's a very important
lesson indeed on the nature
of science that science is not a
body of definite, certain statement.
That science has to do, again, not
only with discovery and exploration
but with skepticism, with
doubts, with uncertainties,
and I think that all
these lessons are very,
very crucial to astrobiology.
>> Seth Shostak: Steve?
>> Steven J. Dick: Well, I would
just reinforce what you said
about the important of microbes.
I think we downplay at
our peril because well,
Lynn Margulis is the famous person
who really emphasized the
importance of microbes.
You all know that thousands of
species of microbes, you know,
we have just on our
body are inside of us,
they're essential to our life.
And so, well, when we find --
if we do find extraterrestrial
intelligence they probably will have
microbes also.
And I think you have to remember
that microbes have played
a very important role.
I didn't talk much about this
but the Columbian Exchange.
Of course these cultures
that I mentioned in terms
of culture contact most
of the damage was not done
by the Spaniards, the damage
was done by the microbes
of the diseases that
were transmitted.
So, when you're talking
about extraterrestrial
life it's very important
to consider the importance
of microbes both
in the positive and in the negative.
I'd be interested in questions from
the audience from the point of view
of my presentation about whether
or not you think lessons really
can be learned from history.
It's a contentious thing in itself.
Lots of people learn lots of
lessons and it usually depends
on what your point of view is,
especially if you're
talking about politics.
And also when, you know,
just how useful is analogy?
Analog as I emphasized
can go overboard
but if you use it cautiously
I think it can be useful,
but there may be other
points of view on that.
>> Seth Shostak: Clement,
a second chance.
No?
>> Clement Vidal: Yes, well,
I can comment on analogy.
I mostly agree with the cognitive
scientists who say that a lot
of commission comes from energy.
But I think it's can be more useful
than you say, that we can really try
to map the similarities between
the two domains of knowledge
and see what is missing in
one and what is in one network
of relations and the other network.
And if there is something
missing then it makes --
it's [inaudible] generate
hypotheses.
Like, oh, maybe since it's like
this in this network of relations,
maybe it's also like that
in this other network.
So it's a powerful way also
to generate new hypotheses.
>> Steven J. Dick: Yeah,
I didn't emphasize that
but analogy is a very hot
topic in philosophy of science
and cognitive science, and
there are these methods
for mapping have been laid out.
So yeah, you could certainly go
into in more detail that I did.
Yeah.
>> Seth Shostak: Yeah.
Okay, well then I'm going to throw
out maybe a question here
just to get you guys started.
Most of the discussion in
terms of framing how we deal
with the possible discovery
of extraterrestrial life,
and by the way, although this
audience is fairly ample in terms
of number, the number of microbes
in the room is actually
considerably more,
and I hope that they
will ask questions.
We've been discussing with
the immediate reaction
to this discovery of life elsewhere.
Almost everything that has been said
has been bad and it would be like,
I don't know, the court
in Spain saying,
well in case Chris
actually discovers land,
it's not that he ever
figured that he had, you know,
here's how we're going to handle
this, this is what we're going
to tell the Spanish
press and whatever.
Not that there was a
press, but -- okay?
And yet the real important
developments were the ones
that came much more slowly, that
took centuries actually to unravel.
And does anybody want to say
anything about the long-term effect
of finding life beyond Earth?
>> Steven J. Dick: Well, just
that I think you're right
and it will be long-term.
If you look at these -- if you
consider the biological universe,
the idea that the universe is full
of life as a kind of worldview
and you use as an analogy
the Copernican or Darwinian
or the Hubble worldviews
that we've gone through,
the effects I think are long-term.
I mean, you know, it took a century
before most people even believed
Copernicus and it took much longer
after that to have the impact
that although you do see some
fairly immediate impact, you know,
the center will not hold, all
coherence is lost, John Donne
and all this [inaudible] the 17th
Century -- 16th, 17th Centuries.
But I do think that it will be
long-term that we can get a handle
on some of that by using these
analogies that I mentioned.
>> Seth Shostak: Clement
mentioned the fact
that it might be a non-communicative
encounter, if we're talking
about intelligence,
or if its microbes,
the microbes may not say anything.
Okay. I mean you just find
some gases in the atmosphere
of a planet there's not, you know,
it tells you something
but not very much.
Clearly I would think that the
long-term reaction would depend a
little bit on whether you in
fact gain more information,
in the case of obviously
intelligence.
You know, is there a message
that you could pick up?
Could you ever understand
that message?
There's some discussion
of that coming up here.
That would change things if Native
Americans had met the Spaniards
and they never understood
anything about them
that would've been a
different scenario, or not.
>> Steven J. Dick: Yeah,
I'd say totally different.
I mean it's one scenario if you
get what we call a dial-tone
in the business where
you just, you know,
you know that it's intelligent
but that's all you know.
It's quite something else if you
can decipher the information.
It's quite something else again if
you -- depending on what they say.
So, yeah, it very much depends
on the scenario I think.
>> Seth Shostak: Does anybody
want to comment on the --
the fact that there is not, to my
knowledge, any organization either
in the governments of
individual nations or in the UN,
or anything that is
actually thinking about this.
Now the public believes
that there is.
The public at least in my experience
they will say, "You know very well
that the military is prepared
in case we discover
extraterrestrial life."
Assuming presumably that
it's hostile, right?
Well, to my knowledge the
military is not prepared.
That don't give this a whole
heck of a lot of thought.
But maybe some organization
should be set up.
Maybe a small office at the UN.
>> Steven J. Dick: Well
the only thing I know
about are the study protocols which
are well-known in the business,
which come under the -- were devised
under the International Academy
of Astronautics and basically
they say first confirm
and then tell everybody.
It would be a good idea to
confirm your observation before you
tell everybody.
But whether that will actually
happen or not, you know,
it's not enforceable
and you gave an example
from your own experience how
people were with email, you know,
getting the message out right away.
So, even those protocols
I think would have --
>> Seth Shostak: But should
we have such an office?
I mean what do you guys think?
I mean, is this an important enough
problem to merit the expenditure
of some money and effort to
have sort of a small group,
maybe two people, three people -- I
don't know, but some group somewhere
that considers this eventuality?
But is that entirely too speculative
in which case why are
we sitting here?
>> Iris Fry: [Inaudible] the United
Nations today has its hands full
so I don't know whether --
>> Steven J. Dick: Yeah, it may not
be their top priority, this is true.
>> Seth Shostak: It's very
definitely not their top priority.
Every time we've gone to them
with these protocols they
have shown no interest.
>> Steven J. Dick: But I think
it is a good idea to have a group
of experts, anthropologists and
philosophers, and scientists as well
who contemplate all of these
various scenarios beforehand.
That's why we're doing this now.
It's always better to be
prepared than not to be prepared
and to think about these things.
One of the things I
didn't mention is
that early actions
are very important.
You know, for example,
with the contact
with the Cortes with the Aztecs.
You know, you can go down one lane
or you can go down another lane
and the early actions
are very important
and the more you can prepare
for those the more likely you'll
have a positive outcome I think.
>> Seth Shostak: Do you think
the Aztecs could have prepared
for an alternative response perhaps?
>> Steven J. Dick: No
the Spaniards might have.
>> Seth: Yes, yes.
Okay, I'll tell you what; let us do
indeed open it up to the audience.
Travis there's a gentleman right
behind the pillar over here
who had his hand up first.
Yes.
>> I think underlying this,
especially in the dimension
of various critics who I think
remain unnamed at that point
but might be interesting to
know where they come from
and what their own agenda is,
is the question of patronage
and the question of legitimacy
in terms of what you do.
Certainly establishing
any kind of activity
that requires resources
implies to other people
that resources go elsewhere
than what they may have
in their own, you know, agenda.
So, if you want to
suggest a continuing center
or a continuing effort, or some
sort of clearinghouse mechanism,
how can you show that it is
in everyone's best interest?
>> Seth Shostak: Interesting
question.
Does somebody want to take that on?
>> Iris Fry: I think you should.
>> Seth Shostak: I'm just like a
carbon rod, I'm only a moderator.
Well, I mean that's
an interesting point.
Would they have their own agenda?
And the public, at least in the
United States, and it's all sort
of anecdotal, but is very skeptical
that the governmental would be open
about this sort of thing.
So if it were a government
committee, you know,
established somewhere
under the [inaudible]
of some government agency,
there would skepticism
in this country, I think.
There was a poll in 2002 conducted
by CNN and Time in which one
of the questions was do you think
that the government is
keeping secret evidence
for extraterrestrials?
And the overwhelming majority
of the American public
thought that was true.
Okay. So indeed, I mean I think you
have the well-motivated question
there if I've understood
it correctly.
But on the other hand,
and apparently the UN doesn't
enjoy tremendous status
on this panel right now,
but one could do this
maybe at a university even.
I mean maybe there would be a little
bit of government money for it,
but just to study the societal
aspects of this question.
Because there's no aspect of --
certainly in the case of SETI,
intelligent life, there's
no aspect of that problem
that more interests the
public than the question
of what will it mean
to me if you succeed?
Their interest in that I can
safely say trumps their interest
in the details of the cross
correlation receivers we use
to try and find the signal.
>> Steven J. Dick: We should
also mention that in terms
of microbes there are the
planetary protection protocols,
in terms of what you do
if you find a microbe.
You certainly don't want to
contaminate what you're looking for
and you certainly don't want
to have back contamination
of the Andromeda strain scenario.
So planetary protection
protocols, which NASA
and other institutions
have to play into this
but they don't go very
far beyond that.
>> Seth Shostak: Clement, you
look like you were about to say.
>> Clement Vidal: Yeah.
I think I have mixed feelings
about this project because like
if it takes [inaudible] it will
take a lot of time to establish
and then what would
the committee do?
So maybe something
more long-term, too.
That they would synthesize
like, each year the [inaudible],
the progress in astrobiology.
And, yeah, regarding the
constitution of the group,
it should be, I think, as
international and as diverse
as possible so that
it's less biased.
>> Seth Shostak: There's a
question that's frequently asked
in connection with the microbial
-- possible microbial life.
If you were to find, for example,
extant life, life that's still there
under the landscapes of
Mars, right, go down 100 feet
and there are these
bacteria down there.
And you know, 100, 200 years
from now you have the capability,
for example, colonizing parts of
Mars, but if you do that suppose
that that obliterates
some of the, you know,
the biota that's already there.
Should you do that?
That kind of thing.
Those kinds of questions have
also led to some conferences
but I don't know that there's any
mechanism for deciding what to do.
>> Clement Vidal: I think there
are well it's [inaudible] of course
but first there is
scientific interest
that you should not [inaudible].
Like when you [inaudible]
analogy when there is a right side
of interesting things
and some businessman want
to build some buildings
to make some business.
There should be a way to let the
[inaudible] just do their job
before, but on the other hand
you can't stop the businessman
who have the money to do the thing.
And it think there is a good
line or argument from the idea
of thermodynamic ethics, which
was proposed by [inaudible],
that we should -- the most advanced,
the most advanced species
have a right
and a duty to spread advanced life.
To transform matter and energy
into more advanced things.
>> You're obviously disappointed
that there isn't a UN office.
Don't you think it's premature?
If you look at something
like near-Earth objects
and asteroid hits, we've been
studying those now scientifically
for almost 20 years to
gather data about asteroids
and whether they're hazardous to
Earth, and we have lots of evidence
of things hitting Earth,
historically and even recently.
So, where's the beef?
Show me the meat.
I want to see the data before
I set up an office in the UN.
Don't you think that
that's more appropriate?
>> Seth Shostak: Well, Margaret,
you're part of the planetary
protection effort and you're worried
about the kind of forward
and backward contamination
that Steve has already mentioned,
and that's being funded by NASA,
and we don't have any, you know,
any evidence that there's any danger
of contamination, at
least coming back,
and yet that effort is being made.
So why not make some effort
for, you know, the, if you will,
the societal impact of discovering
that there's life out there?
>> Don't scientists do that already
-- scientists and social scientists?
>> Seth Shostak: Scientists
certainly speculate about it plenty.
You see it here, right?
But the question is should
there be some dedicated effort,
that is only the idea.
>> Thanks for your talks.
I want to call attention to
the elephant in the room,
and I mean that not just
facetiously but almost literally.
It seems like all the arguments,
assumptions, analogies, examples,
that we've been talking
about so far have to do
with either finding microbes,
or finding intelligent life
which is assumed to be some
kind of life that is humanoid.
We're talking about contact
between two human cultures
or between Cro-Magnon
and Neanderthal.
But the big gap here, is in terms of
how we relate to the other animals
on this planet, and no one seems
to be willing to talk about that
and I'd be interested in why you
think historically astrobiology
hasn't always considered those
exemplars and that whole realm
of science to be something
that might be relevant
to what we're talking about?
>> Seth Shostak: You
stumped the panel.
But of course there are
studies, as you know, well,
dolphins have figured large,
at least in the SETI Enterprise
because they were considered
an analogy, if you will,
that if you can't understand
them what hope do you have
of understanding some sort of, you
know, other worldly intelligence.
So there have been some studies,
but maybe you could refine your
point a little bit because --
>> You get what I said,
I mean, yeah,
dolphins have historically been of
interest to SETI and astrobiology.
Dolphins are [inaudible] and apart
from that there really hasn't been
any active research in the area
of astrobiology on
evolutionary intelligence.
And, you know, the fact is, is
that, yeah, dolphins are [inaudible]
that we share the planet with
but we also share the planet
with many other intelligent
[inaudible].
And it seems to me that I think
it's kind of [inaudible] the thing
about microbes, who are
complex, [inaudible] thinking
about other humanoids as
historical examples of analogy.
And what about the
history of our relationship
with the other animals
on the planet?
It could very well be likely that
we find someone on another planet
who isn't [inaudible] have a
radio telescope, isn't a microbe,
and need to consider
[inaudible] an animal.
And what do we do about that?
>> Steven J. Dick: Well, I
think we're going to be talking
about that this afternoon, right?
That's the afternoon session.
But it's an interesting
historical question,
why astrobiology hasn't considered
that very robustly at least.
It's an interesting
research question.
>> Seth Shostak: Yeah.
Let me offer one thing.
It may be just a matter of finding
the keys under the street lamp.
You know, you look for the kind
of life that's easy to find.
And microbes in great
quantity produce evidence
that you can measure for
many light years of distance,
and so could a technologically
capable civilization.
So you say now I know
what experiment to do,
to consider an experiment
that might find, you know,
large mammals in the oceans of
other worlds is hard if they're not
in the solar system I think.
Maybe that's part of it.
>> Iris Fry: I'm sorry.
I got the feeling that
what you were --
maybe I am wrong, but you are
really interested in our relations
to all these animals,
intelligent or not on this planet,
more than finding an elephant
or a dolphin on another planet.
So, astrobiology almost
by definition is relating
to extraterrestrial
entities and I believe
that there are scientific
disciplines,
other scientific disciplines
that either are or supposed
to be more aware of,
you know, life on Earth.
So I think that that has
to be made clear first.
>> I think that's an interesting
response, one I [inaudible] humans.
Because all the analogies
we are using are from the --
how we deal with [inaudible],
how we deal with other humans,
the Spaniards and the Aztecs.
And I'm just saying that if we are
going to use analogies, examples,
and speaking about the framework,
our mindset of astrobiology,
I just see a big gap in
our thinking that needs
to be filled out a bit more.
Because yeah, there may not
be animals on another planet
but that's not a relevant issue.
The issue is the continuity
of life on Earth.
>> Seth Shostak: Well,
one thing I will say.
Your suggestion that we ought to
do more research into the evolution
of intelligence I think
is very well founded.
That's the most controversial
thing in this enterprise
if you're speaking
about intelligent life.
You know, I'll give you a million
worlds of bacteria how many
of them ever cook up something
as clever as a dolphin?
Mary did you --
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Yeah, Travis if you could.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Right here.
>> Mary Voytek: I just
want to make sure
that we don't conflate
searching for intelligence
with astrobiology,
they're not the same.
And so I think astrobiology
thinks about ecosystems
and certainly is interested in other
animals as they are an ecosystem,
but as they necessarily lead
to civilization or an ability
for someone to communicate.
And I also just want to -- not
making a plug for microbes,
but just point out that one can
imagine a planet that has microbes
and no complex life
or intelligent life,
but I don't think you have a single
scientist that could imagine a life
that had complex or intelligent
life that didn't also have microbes.
In our own history, which is
fortunately the only sample of life
that we know is here on
Earth; we had microbes
for maybe four billion years
before the flash of a human.
And so, the likelihood -- well, I'll
stop there with just those points,
[inaudible] other opportunities.
>> Seth Shostak: Good point.
But what about a planet that's been
colonized by thinking machines?
No microbes.
>> Steven J. Dick: There you go.
>> Seth Shostak: Okay.
There are plenty people here.
Yeah.
>> Since the scientific
revolution it's been said
that there have been several
[inaudible] human beings
[inaudible], you mentioned
Copernicus, Darwin, others,
you mentioned Floyd and so forth.
But I was wondering as far
as if there is an Arthur C.
Clarke childhoods and scenario,
vastly superior extraterrestrial
intelligence what are the historical
analogies of the imperialism,
for example, or the effects
of European contacts with African,
South American, and other cultures
around the world, quite different
from the scientific effects
of the scientific community
and these places.
What about the effects
on the traditional values
and belief systems and so forth of
the indigenous, in other words us,
which were profoundly disruptive,
profoundly dispiriting
and demoralizing?
Think of the American Indians
on the reservations today.
I mean, we're not going --
I don't think there's a kind
of rosy scenario like in "E.T."
You know where we just
go blissfully off
and learn all these
wonderful things.
I think it's going to
be profound metaphysical
and pseudo [inaudible] religious
and so forth and societal,
massive disruptions of our
culture to find experience
of a technologically
and scientifically far
superior civilization.
>> Seth Shostak: [Inaudible] we have
several people who sort of talked
around that type of question.
>> Iris Fry: Yeah.
So would you suggest in order not
to take this risk not to explore.
>> No, no.
I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying that we
shouldn't [inaudible] have
such a [inaudible] view
of, you know, [inaudible].
It will be enormously
exciting to [inaudible].
You know, what sort of effects
[inaudible] to stabilize the effects
of the [inaudible]
species and [inaudible].
>> Seth Shostak: For the
people who couldn't hear,
he just questions the
sanguine attitude
about discovering life
when, you know,
would the masses find
it such good news?
>> Steven J. Dick: Yeah,
there are some theories,
I didn't talk about this,
but there are some theories
of societal impact of
various magnitudes.
There's one by Jean
Laudrere [assumed spelling],
who's not very well known but
has to do with the societal.
He's a philosopher --
French philosopher.
And his main thing was that
you have, before the impact --
of course you have a
pre-impact scenario
where you have various values
and assumptions and so on
and then you have the event occur,
and then afterwards
it's all reconstructed.
So, that's fine to some
extent but of course
if it's an event that's really
destructive or overwhelming then
that may all go out the door.
So you could set up I think
sort of a classification system
of how powerful, you know,
the event is going to be
and come up with scenarios there.
But there are various theories of
societal impact, especially having
to do with science and technology
that could be employed there
to begin to address that I think.
I don't know offhand what
a good analogy would be.
>> Seth Shostak: Well I
think Clement spoke of the --
there's a, you know,
a large parameter space
of possibilities here.
I mean discovering microbes
on Titan is one scenario.
Having the, you know, aliens land in
New Jersey is a different scenario.
And obviously the perceived
importance is different.
>> So, getting back to the one
topic where you were talking
about authoritative sources.
In other words, life is
discovered and the word gets out.
Of course, social media is
going to dominate everything.
So, it's going to be all kinds
of sets of information in a range
of belief and disbelief
and outrageous statements,
et cetera within the social media.
But authoritative sources,
do we have those?
Is the NAI speak for microbial?
Does SETI speak for
intelligent life discoveries?
You know, do we have
those developed?
Is that really the way the social
media will go by looking for those?
>> Seth Shostak: Yeah, I think
that's an excellent question.
Who's going -- suppose discovery is
made next week, who speaks to that?
Where does the public
get its information?
>> Iris Fry: I would like
just to say about the case --
to say a few words about the
case of the Martian Rock in 1996.
And people came -- I mean the
researchers published their results
and it was a big, of
course, noise around it,
but I think that science
took its course
and other people examined
other slices of the rocks
and then there was debate
in the scientific paper.
It came out also in
the public media.
So, when you talk about
authoritative source,
I think that the question
of authority
in science is not an easy one
because science is actually involved
in debate and people
criticize each other.
And so, I'm not sure whether
you have to expect a situation
where there is a discovery, somebody
comes up and stands on the podium
and said this and that happened.
Because I think that it will be
a scientific discovery and yeah.
>> Seth Shostak: Yeah.
Anybody else want to say anything?
>> Steven J. Dick: Yeah, I
think part of it is the question
of how much the media
listens to the authority.
You know, in the case of the Mars
Rock, of course, the press was all
over it at the beginning
but five or 10 years later
when it was gradually down,
you know, it was discovered
that probably it was not there was
not so much a brouhaha over it.
So, I think that may just in
part be the nature of the media.
>> Seth Shostak: Yeah.
I think the experience
with the media indeed is
that look, this story breaks.
Very quickly, within an
hour or so it's a big story.
And they go through their
Rolodexes and they say, all right,
who do we know that's a
reliable authority to pontificate
on this subject, whether
they know anything about it.
I can assure you that,
and you know that.
And they will be the
first responders
and they will say stuff based
on very little information
over the course of days, of
course, that will, you know,
that information will deepen.
But it's going to be
chaotic at the beginning
and I don't think there's
any avoiding that.
I mean, the IAA sets
up these committees
that are supposed to
respond to all this.
They will be all entirely too
slow and unknown to the media.
>> Got to take --
>> Yeah, wanted to build on Mary's
good point about astrobiology
as a discipline and how much
of astrobiology is wrapped
into discoveries that we're
making right here on Earth
about extremophile life, about
the diversity of bacteria,
the locations that life can thrive.
And so I was wondering
maybe if the philosophers
and the historians [inaudible]
could maybe share a little bit
about how discoveries that
you've made here on Earth
about different ways that life
can begin to thrive and survive
and exist impact our worldview
and also impact how we think
about this problem of discovery.
>> Steven J. Dick: Well, I'm
not sure how much impact,
again it depends what segment
of society you're talking about.
I'm not sure that the masses
of people care much
about extremophiles.
So you know how much impact has
it had on the common person?
Probably not very much.
But on the other hand
it's had a great impact
in the scientific community.
So I think when you're talking
about impact not only do you have
to parse the various scenarios
of discovery but you also have
to parse what part of the
population you're talking about.
And this is what you have to do --
we'll talk more about this
this afternoon, or is tomorrow?
Tomorrow I guess when we talk
about theological impact.
Different segments of the population
will be impacted in different ways.
So, society of course is not
monolithic as we all know.
Nor would we necessary
want it to be,
but the impacts therefore
will be different.
Yeah.
>> Clement Vidal: But to answer your
question I think simply it opens
up research space.
It means that life is robust to
many environments so it's good news.
Yeah. Life has many
chances to be somewhere.
>> Iris Fry: Yeah.
I would just like to say in this
connection that worldview --
you asked about the
impact on worldview,
worldview I'm afraid is not
democratic in the sense,
for example I talked about
the evolutionary worldview.
How many people in this
world support evolution?
This country contributes
to this, as we know,
greatly of not supporting evolution.
But if you poll humanity
most people reject evolution.
But still what we call the
evolutionary worldview is here
and very strong among scientists,
among philosophers of science.
So, it's unfortunate that
this is the case and I think
that many projects taken by the
AAAS, and I just heard from Connie
and the Smithsonian Institute,
to educate the public,
to have outreach programs educating
and transferring information
about science are very important.
But there is this gap between sort
of elite, scientific, philosophical,
cultural elite, and the
rest of humanity I'm afraid.
Yeah.
>> Seth Shostak: Okay.
Yes, ma'am.
>> I thank you all on the panel for
bringing such enlightenment to us.
I want to echo something I heard
from the young lady on my left say
and the gentleman in the front.
One, I am concerned about
the arrogance that we bring
to discovery and exploration.
I don't think we have a great
track record as a species.
And so I would hope
that there is a place
where we can discuss the moral
impact of what we're trying to do
in the name of science, discovery,
and exploration and the like.
But the other thing that I
wanted to mention was is there --
ask, is there someone or
a body that is looking
at the actual definition of life?
Does it always have to be
carbon-based, biological life
as we think of it, A, and B,
is there someone or a body
of someones talking about the
nature of intelligence itself,
and what does that look like?
I'm feeling a -- probably an
inescapable anthropocentric bias
in what we're talking about here
and so I think it addresses some
of the other issues
that were raised.
>> Steven J. Dick:
You're all anxious to get
to the afternoon session, right?
Because that's exactly
what we're talking about.
We'll be talking about
intelligence and life.
I don't think there's any official
body that talks about these things
but plenty of philosophers have a
lot to say about the nature of life,
and sometimes differing from
what the scientists have to say
about the nature of life.
Of course the scientists have to
have an operational definition
if we're going to Mars to look
for life and that sort of thing.
So, I'm sure we're going to get
into this in detail this afternoon.
>> Seth Shostak: Yeah.
Two good questions.
There's always the Judge Potter
approach to life or intelligence.
You'll recognize it when you see it.
Not a good one.
This woman has written a lot about
-- what does it mean to be alive?
>> Carol Cleland: [Inaudible]
I don't want to talk
about the definition of life but
I want to address [inaudible].
>> Seth Shostak: Yes, you
can but you can't do it
without a microphone, Carol.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Mind you. We can hear you.
>> Carol Cleland: So I want to pick
up where Lori left off in response
to your human analogs
for first contact,
the Aztec for example
and the Spaniards.
One of the things that's
really remarkable
about our species is how
incredibly inbred it is.
We all know now we're like cheetahs.
We went through a bottleneck
about 70 or 80,000 years ago
in which there were only about
6,000 people survived it.
So we're all very, very similar
despite the racial distention
we have.
We're really remarkably similar.
And our perceptual systems
are extraordinarily similar,
our sensory systems, our social
systems, and our language.
I could go on and on.
So these kinds of contact
analogs presuppose creatures
who are shockingly like
us, not just a little
like anthropomorphic
but shockingly like us.
And I think the reason
I wanted to pick
up on Lori's point is
we don't really know,
and I'm sure Lori would agree
with this, how smart dolphins are.
They are extraordinarily
different from us.
They communicate via sonar,
[inaudible] their intelligence
is spent in social interactions.
They're very complex in
their social interactions.
Similarly we have a very small
range of spectra which we can see.
We know Hymenoptera can see
in the ultraviolet range.
We look at a dull, white flower,
they see a magnificently
striped flower.
I would think that if you
really want to study how
to have first contact, what you
might expect, how to communicate
with aliens, you would spend time
not just trying to communicate
with dolphins, but you might
spend time studying how
to communicate with them.
Studying where it's
successful and where it's not.
Because we are really remarkably
similar and I think that many
of these analogs are very unlikely
to hold in a case of first contact
with aliens who come from a
very different environment,
because we are all
evolved to fit our own --
>> Seth Shostak: So your question
is are we too anthropocentric?
>> Carol Cleland: Shouldn't we be
spending much more money studying,
as Lori suggests, I'm
back to her point,
interactions with say dolphins,
creatures who are really quite
different from us in terms
of their sensory systems or
social structure, et cetera?
>> Steven J. Dick: No I think
you're absolutely right.
I mean I alluded to that.
To some extent I think we study the
culture contacts like the Aztecs,
that's the one you always
hear about, to debunk them.
And I think that -- although I think
that you can get good information
about communication, and language,
and concepts, conceptual differences
and that sort of thing, and that's
why I also mentioned Neanderthal,
which would be nice to know
exactly how they interacted
because it is a different
species at least.
But I think you're absolutely right
to go to, you know, other animals,
the cephalopods and other -- that
may be where the best analogies are
because they have a totally
different perceptual and,
you know, process.
>> Carol Cleland: Neanderthal
really aren't a different species.
They [inaudible].
>> Steven J. Dick: Well,
they are a different --
there's a big controversy
about that.
They're both genus Homo but --
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Sorry?
>> Carol Cleland: They've
been reclassified
as Homo sapiens Neanderthals.
>> Steven J. Dick: Okay.
Well, I bet there's some controversy
about that classification.
>> Carol Cleland: [Inaudible]
2.8% Neanderthal and she's 2.9%.
>> Steven J. Dick: Right.
>> Carol Cleland: So, you know.
We have Neanderthal ancestors.
>> Steven J. Dick: Right.
That's right.
Yes. No, that's a good point.
>> Seth Shostak: Okay.
Did some questions come out --
a lot of the questions have been
from panelists so let's here from
some people who are not panelists.
>> I wanted to ask Dr. Vidal if
he could expand on his comment
that we have a duty of
colonization if we are alone.
>> Clement Vidal: Yes.
So, again, it comes from an attempt
to universal ethics
based on thermodynamics.
And the idea is to preserve
energy and to make the most of it.
So, it means that if there is
another solar system near us
and the sun shines, and
the energy of this --
sorry, it's star shines and the
energy of this star is dissipated
and it's automatically lost.
And the idea of thermo ethics is
to make the most of this energy
and to use it to make life,
intelligence, and something rich.
>> Iris Fry: Whose
idea is it by the way?
>> Clement Vidal: Robert [inaudible]
developed it and [inaudible].
>> Seth Shostak: I take it
the question or you may not be
in total agreement that we have
this imperative to colonize?
Or am I reading into
what you just said?
>> Yeah I [inaudible].
>> Seth Shostak: Yeah.
Well there is something called the
family paradox but nobody seems
to have brought it up, so I won't.
Yes, ma'am.
>> Thank you.
My question is about problems
related to finding intelligent life,
and something that
hasn't really come up is
that intelligent life will have
its own agency and its own kind
of decision-making, and potentially
even choose to hide from us.
Which raises the question,
part of preparing
for discovery is reflecting on
whether we are actually ready
to be found or whether we might
be in a galactic quarantine
where intelligent life is concerned.
And so part of preparing for
discovery might be to reflect
on public policy on the, you
know, how is it that we interact
as sentient life on a planet?
And Clement brought up this
wonderful example and this notion
of our planetary identity.
So if we are going to be
viewed by intelligent life
that will make decisions on,
one, whether to contact us, two,
what nature that contact may take,
the way humans interact as a species
of being dysfunctional or not,
and I speak as a Brit on the eve
of the Scot's referendum,
well, you know, it's going on.
We're not terribly good at
interacting with one another
and this is where I wonder
if there's a place to talk
about how we need to actually
be acting on Earth so that if
and when there is contact
that it then precedes
in a way we might want.
I mean someone brought up
kind of weaponry just briefly,
and we looked at the stats
of different kinds of levels
of technological development.
The odds that we are so
close technologically
that doing a big more
research will allow us
to have a military
advantage is zero, you know,
the astronomical terms
of that, you know,
we're not going to
be that close anyway.
>> Seth Shostak: Let me see if
I can summarize your question
because I think your
question is should we not
in fact be looking more
carefully at our own, if you will,
behavior in connection
with the possibly
of discovering life [inaudible].
And maybe they're being cryptic
simply because of our own behavior
and this is a motivation
to study that more?
Did I get your question?
>> Something like that, but how
-- the ways in which, I mean,
in terms of making
recommendations [inaudible] policy.
I mean, policy
about extraterrestrials is
nearly a continuum going
from [inaudible] policy
with your own neighbor
through to foreign policy through
to extraterrestrial policy.
>> Seth Shostak: Okay, well let
me just say very, very briefly --
>> [Inaudible] I mean
they may make choices
about whether they want to know us.
>> Seth Shostak: Right.
Yeah. Well they may and I
have to say, I get an email
at least twice a week from somebody
who says you'll never find the
aliens because our behavior is
so bad they won't want to
have any dealings with us.
This is anthropocentric in
the extreme in my opinion.
It's like the ants thinking
nobody's ever going to study us
because we're always at war.
Right? And yet E.O. Wilson spends
plenty of time with those ants.
>> But [inaudible] agency
and that's something that --
>> Seth Shostak: Well,
it's true, we have agency,
but let me just short circuit
all that because I think
that what short circuits
all that is the fact
that they don't know
anything about any of that.
They're too far away
to know anything
about what we're doing today.
>> Steven J. Dick: So I think
what you're talking about in part
at least is diplomacy
and certainly we --
>> [Inaudible] when you find
extraterrestrials [inaudible].
>> Steven J. Dick: Yeah, yeah.
We do have people, in fact one in
the audience here Michael Musho,
a former State Department Diplomat,
who's written extensively on this.
So there is interest in
that and I'd refer to his --
I don't know if he wants to
say anything now on this point
but he has an excellent
book on communication
with extraterrestrial intelligence
which includes some of the,
and he's been involved in the SETI
protocols and that sort of thing.
So I think there is something
to look at there with regard
to diplomacy, if we're
going to be preparing
for discovery we may
want to take a look at.
>> Seth Shostak: We
have about five minutes.
Let's take a -- yeah.
>> Clement, can you expound a little
bit on the [inaudible] concept.
>> Steven J. Dick: It's far-out.
>> Clement Vidal: So,
the main argument is
to extrapolate two trends of our
own civilization development.
The one is the increase of
energy, and so that's [inaudible]
that [inaudible] civilization
becomes at a certain point able
to master the energy
of its parent star.
So its energy use, which increases,
like the diagram I showed.
And the second argument is
the increase of technologies
and the identification that we --
the major scientific and
technological progress today are due
to our abilities to
miniaturize more and more.
If you think of biotechnologies,
nanotechnologies.
So I pushed this reasoning
to the extreme,
that an advanced civilization
would be able
to manipulate very
small scales of matter,
nuclear scales and possibly below.
And so if you put the two
together you have the idea
of a very dense body which uses
the analogy of its parent star.
And I looked in the literature and
I found something which corresponded
which are called interacting
binary systems.
So it's a binary star system where
you have one big companion star
and one dense object which can
be a white dwarf neutron star
or a black hole.
And there is an energy flow which
goes from the companion star
to the dense object, and this
energy flow is irregular,
and there are also
some ejection of matter
which can jets or [inaudible].
And so this displays the
primitive properties of metabolism
and so that's why it's an
interesting open question if it's
like a microscopic metabolic system.
>> Steven J. Dick: So the bottom
line is he thinks certain double
stars may be showing evidence in
intelligence, which is, you know,
not accepted by most astronomers of
course, but I give Clement points
for thinking out of the box in the
same way that Freeman Dyson thought
out of the box with
the Dyson sphere.
So, it's a hypothesis.
>> Seth Shostak: The nice thing
about this whole field it's
very fertile with new ideas.
Jason I think you want to tell
people about what happens next.
We're out of time for this session.
>> So we've reached the
end of panel number one.
Please join me in thanking
all of our --
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.