Transcripts For CSPAN2 Astrobiology And Extraterrestrial Life 20140819

Thought essential to life. Kepler 186f only 10 larger than the earth and only 490 light years today. The planet survey satellite which will launch in 2017 and James Webb Space Telescope launching in 2018 will help scientists discover more planets with potential bio signatures. The United States has pioneered the field of astrobiology and continues to lead the world in this type of research. Is a example of professional papers published published in se magazine between 1995 and 2013 illustrates the Significant Growth and growing popularity of the field of astrobiology. Between 1995 and 2012, the numbers of papers published on astrobiology increased 10 times and number of scientific reports that cited astrobiology increased 25 times. Astrobiology is a serious subject studied by serious scientists around the world. Reflecting this interest next september the library of congress and nasa will hold a twoday astrobiology symposium on what the society al impacts could be of finding microbial, complex or intelligent life in the universe. Whether life exists on other planets in the universe continues to be a matter of debate among scientists. Around the world a number of astronomers listen to naturally occurring radio frequencies. They try to filter out cosmic noise and interference of human made satellites and spacecraft to find anomalies that could be from civilizations elsewhere in the universe. The allen telescope array financed by microsoft cofounder paul allen and the telescope in puerto rico are two wellknown location for conducting radio astronomy searches for life in the universe. Earlier audio astronomers detected seconals that lasted only a few milliseconds. These fast radio bursts as theyre called, caused scientists to speculate as to their cause. Some scientists thought it they would be from stars colliding or extraterrestrial intelligence source. Other astronomers look for radio light pulses instead of radio waves. At optical telescope run by harvardsmithsonian enter of physics and university of california at berkeley among others use optical telescopes to try to detect nanosecond pulses or flashes of light distinct from pulse sars or other naturally occurring phenomenon pulsars. I hope todays hearing will enable us to hear how research in astrobiology continues to expand this fascinating frontier. The unknown and unhe can plodder areas of space spark human curiosity. Americans and others around the world look up at the stars and wonder if we are alone or is there life on other planets . That concludes my Opening Statement and the ranking member, gentle women from texas, miss johnson, is recognized for hers. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman and good morning. In the interests of saving time i will forgo making an Opening Statement and instead i will simply welcome dr. Shore stack and dr. Werthimer on this mornings on search for life and intelligent life in outer space. You both are distinguished researchers and i know you have thoughtful testimony to present and this afternoon well determine whether well have researchers to continue this. So thank you, and i yield back. Thank you, miss johnson. Would i like to introduce our witnesses at this point. Our first witness, dr. Seth show stack, shows stack. He held this poppings. Dr. Show stack,. He was written 400 magazines, technology astrology, film and television. He contributed and edited to contribute dozen scientific and popular astronomy books. He authored four books including sharing the universe, perspectives on extraterrestrial life and confessions of an alien hunter, a scientists search for extraterrestrial intelligence. You can hear him each week as hose of one hour long Radio Program on astrobiology entitled, big picture science. Dr. Shostak, received bachelor from princeton an phd in astro physics from the California Institute of technology. Our second witness, dr. Dan wert imer, worked at Space Sciences laboratory at uc berkeley since 1983. He is currently director of several of the labs centers including the Research Center and center for astronomy, signal processing and electronics research. Additionally mr. Werthimer serves as chief scientist for the lans seti at home program and associate director of the berkeley wireless Research Center. Mr. Werthimer coauthored seti 2020. Editor of bio astronomy, molecules, microbes and extraterrestrial life. Astronomical and biochemical origins in the search for life in the universe. His research has been featured in many broadcast news stories such as on abc, cbs, and many major newspapers and magazines. His work reach ad younger audience through scholastic weekly, a Science Magazine for kids. Mr. Werthimer received bachelors and masters degrees in physics and astronomy from San Francisco state university. I will start with dr. Shostak and go to mr. Wert imer. Weird imer. Thank you, congressman smith for opportunity to be here. I will give you a big picture thoughts and intelligent life and life that can uphold side of conversation as opposed microbial life. This is obviously subject of great interest to many people. When you back up and see about the discovery after new planet, something, water on mars, youre looking one of three horses in a race to be the first to find some extraterrestrial biology. The first horse is simply to find it nearby and thats where the big money is. Rovers on mars, the moons of outer Solar Systems, theyre at least half a dozen other words that might have life in our solar civil. The chances of finding it i think are good and if that happens, it will happen in the next 20 years, depending on the financing. The second horse in that race is to build very large instruments that can sniff, if you will, the atmospheres of planets around other stars and maybe find oxygen in the atmosphere or methane, which as you know is produced by cows and pigs and things like that but biology in any case and so you could find pigs in space i suppose. That is again, a project, depending on funding that could yield results in the next two decade. The third horse in that race is seti, search for extraterrestrial intelligence. That idea, if you have seen the movie contact, you know what the idea is, eavesdrop on signals deliberately or accidentally leaked off of somebody elses world. That makes sense because in fact, even we, only 100 years after tesla and marconi and invention shun of practical radio we already have technology that would allow to us send bits of information across light years of distance to punitive extraterrestrials. Let me tell you why i think theyre out there by the way. That is, you know, it is unproven whether there is any life. That is the situation today. You heard me say twice now i think that situation is going to change within everyones lifetime in this room. Okay, the reason is, the universe is very full of habitats for life. Congressman smith mentioned number of stars in our galaxy. With respect that number is rather larger. Something like 2 to 400 billion stars but we now know that 70 of them have planets. Recent results from nasas kepler telescope in astoundingly successful instrument, suggest that one in five stars may have planets that are cousins of the earth. What that means is, in our own galaxy there are tens of billions of other planets that are the kind you might want to build condos on and live, all right . Tens of billions. If that isnt adequate for your requirements, let me point out there are 150 billion other galaxy west see with our telescopes, each with similar compliment of earthlike worlds. What that means the numbers are so astounding if this is the only planet which not only life but intelligent life has arisen, then we are extraordinarily exceptional, like find buying trillions of lottery tickets and none is winner that. Would be very unusual. Everybody likes to think theyre special and im sure you all are, maybe were not that special. History of astronomy every time we thought we were special we know we were wrong. What has been done so far, various radios, i wont detail the technology. We looked at parts, much of the sky at fairly low sensitivity over limited range of radio wave lengths, radio sections of the band. We have looked in particular directions at a few thousand star systems. In other words we just begun the search. The fact we havent found anything means nothing. Like looking for fauna in africa and giving up you only examined one city block. The reason the search is cramp and constricted, honest is the own no funding for this. Totally private funding. The number of people that do seti for a living is fewer than number of people in any row in the audience behind me. That is the world total for this endeavor. When are we going to find them . You heard me suggest that may happen rather quickly. Let me point out two other things. One, this is very interesting to the public. Because they have seen extraterrestrials on television and in the movies all their lives. Okay. That also gives it a certain giggle factor. Very easy to make fun of this. On the other hand it would have been easy to make fund of Ferdinand Magellans idea to sail around the earth or captain cook to map the south pacific. That is exploration. That is what this is. The consequences are always, shall we say salubrious. To find there is life out there, intelligent life would cali great our position in the universe. It would as congressman smith said, probably the greatest discovery mankind can ever make. What is important this is first generation with both the knowledge and technology to do that. Thank you, doctor shows stack have shostak. Mr. Werthimer. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about are we alone. Is anybody out there. Can you guys show the slides . I want to walk you through some of the seti experiments we and other people are doing. So as seth mentioned, this nasa kepler mission, from that we have learned there are a trillion planets in our milky way galaxy. That is more plan its than there are stars, lots of places for life. We learned a lot of these planets are what we called goldilocks distance, not too hot, not too cold, rocky planets with liquid water. There could be a lot of life out there. How are we getting in touch . One of the ideas, earth links have been sending off radio, Television Signals for last 57 years. Early television shows, i love lucy, ed sullivan. The nearby stars have seen the simpsons. Turn that around if were broadcasting maybe some are sending signals in our direction, leaking signals way we unintentionally send off signals or maybe a deliberate signals. They could be sending laser signals. There are a number of projects looking for laser signals. This is project harvard university, a clever project. This is project at lick observatory. There is a project in hawaii at the telescope looking for laser signals. People are also looking for radio signals. Our group use the Worlds Largest radio antenna. We call it radio telescope. This is the telescope in puerto rico. It is a thousand feet in diameter. Holds 10 billion bowls of corn flakes. We havent actually tried that. It is operated by the National Science foundation and most astronomers would be lucky to use this telescope, a day or two a year of the we figured out a way to use the telescope at the same time that other scientists are using it, so we can collect data yearround all day. Were collecting data as we talk to you. Now that is actually a problem. Even though we get the Worlds Largest tell cope all yearround, it creates enormous amount of data. To analyze the data we ask volunteers for help. If you, you can help us running a program on your home computer, your laptop or desktop computer. Install a program called, seti at home. A screen Saver Program of the way we take the data from the Worlds Largest telescope and we break it up into little pieces. Everybody get as piece of the sky to analyze. You install this program. It pops up when you go out for cup of coffee and computer goes through the data looking through all the different frequencies and signal types. This is what it looks like when it is running on your computer at home. It take as few days to analyze data, looking for interesting signals. When it find interesting signals it send them back to berkeley. You get a new chunk of data, different part of the sky to work on. If you are lucky one at that find that faint murmur from distant civilization you might fet the nobel prize. There is a catch. Millions of people downloaded seti home screen safer. Split out into 200 countries. Together volunteers formed one of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet and enabled the most sensitive search for extraterrestrial signals anybody has ever done. So were very grateful to the volunteers. We made that more general, so that, you can participate in not just seti with your home computer but you can participate in lots of projects. There are climate prediction projects. There is gravity way project. Protein folding. You can look for malaria drugs, hiv drugs and allocate how you want the cycles to be used on your home computer. One of the new products were working on and were asking universities and observatoriries around the world to look at a lot of different wave length bands, a lot of different frequencies. Were targeting very nearest stars and trying to cover all the different band that come through the earths atmosphere. Were looking radio frequencies. Were looking infrared frequencies or wave lengths and looking also optical frequencies looking for lazer signals. This will be extremely comprehensive search. We have eight different telescopes were using an looking at all these different band but only targeting the nearby stars. Another project were launching this year is interplanetary eavesdropping. The idea of this project there may be signals going back and forth between two planets in a distant solar system. Maybe eventually well have machines or people on mars and well have Radio Communication or laser communication between our two planets. Put it the other way, distant civilization may have colonized a planet in their own solar system and there may be radio or laser signals going back and forth between those two planets. Now with the kepler spacecraft we know exactly when two planets in distant solar system are lined up with earth so we can schedule observations and target that and see if we can intercept those signals going back and forth between two different planets. Were using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to do that experiment. We havent found e. T. s so far. We found a planet made of solid diamond. Map of black hole in center of galaxy. Brain research which may eventually control prosthetic arms. We havent found e. T. So far. We had radio one hundred years. Were learning how to do it. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. Were optimistic in the long run. The reason im optimistic in the long run, seti is limited by Computer Technology which is growing exponentially. It is limited by telescope technology. China is building a huge telescope bigger than arisbo. Australians are working on huge till scope made of thousands of dishes combined to make a giant telescope. I will stop there. I have a couple of poems i could read from the volunteers. Im out of time. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, mr. Werthimer. Thank you for your testimony. You anticipated my questions a little bit. I would still like to go forward with them. Let me address the first question to you all starting with dr. Shostak. It is this, kind of a twopart question. What do you think, i can anticipate your answer a little bit on basis of your statement, but what do you think is the possibility of microbial life found in the universe or intelligent life being found in the universe . So the first question goes to the possibility. The second question would be what do you think is the likelihood of finding either microbial life or intelligent life in the universe, two different kind of questions . Dr. Shows stack. Well the probability of life is hard to estimate, what we do know now, something we didnt know very recently, even 20 years ago, we did not know were there habitats that could support life . What astronomy has proven the last 500 years the entire universe is made out of the same stuff, right . Most distant galaxies have same 92 elements on the wall in your 9th grade classroom, right if youve taken chemistry in school you dont have to take it again if you move to another galaxy. It is same everywhere. There are Building Blocks there. There will be plenty of planets with liquid water and atmosphere. The kind of salubrious condition in hyattville. The life could arise. We know life began on earth very, very quickly. Only a sample of one. It is not entirely convincing. It does suggest that it wasnt difficult for life to get foothold on this planet or elsewhere. Life is maybe not so hard to get started. That is sort of 9 general impression among scientists. What they believe is not so important. Finding it is so important. Second part of your question, what about intelligent life . That is a lot harder, right . The earth had life for 3 1 2 billion, probably 4 billion years, almost since the beginning, right . This place has been carpeted with life. The whole time you required a microscope to see it, all microbial. Only last 500 years cellular life. You know the whole story. That opens up a question i give you a million worlds with life what fraction of them will cook up something as clever as you all . The answer to that, we dont know the answer to that. There are suggestions it will happen given enough time because simply were not only species that became clever in past 50 million years. If you have dogs and cats at home, theyre cleverer than dinosaurs. Intelligence pays off. Thank you, dr. Shostak. You made a point. 20 years ago we havent detect ad feet tall planet outside of our soil lar system. Now it is up to 2,000. Exponential growth in astrobiology research. Mr. Werthimer. I suspect the research is teaming with microbial life. It would be bizarre if we are alone. I dont know that for sure. Intelligence will be rarer. There are a trillion planets i believe it will happen often. It happened several times on this planet and likely to arise elsewhere. You would put it at 100 then . 99. 99. 999 stropping on out. Okay, good. The next question, mr. Werthimer, let me follow up with you. As far as assetty at home screen saver something for students to take advantage of as well as members. I tried to adapt that to my laptop in my office several years ago and was not able to. Maybe well talk some more. Maybe government needs to change its policy, im not sure which. Let me ask you, what are the advantages and disadvantages of radio seti versus optical setty . There are lots of pros and cons. Lasers are good for point to point communication, lots of bitspersecond, lots of diet attch i think the best strategy is multiple strategy. We should look for all kind of different signals and not put all our money in one basket. Hard to predict what civilizations is are doing. If you asked me one one years to look for i would have said smoke signals. We rye try to launch a new seti project every year. Dr. Werthimer any advantages to seti . I point theyre different colors of same thing. In fact different colors. Theyre both electromagnetic communication. We use both in our telecommunications here on earth. I suspect aliens will as well. I get a email every week, you guys looking for radio, that is old school. Extraterrestrials assuming theyre out there will use something much more sophisticate. That depend on physics. We shouldnt discount a technology because it has been around. We use the wheel every day. That is pretty old technology. I suspect we use the wheel for a long time. Thank you for your answers to my questions. The ranking member, miss johnson is recognized for her questions. Thank you very much, im trying very hard to ask something that sounds sensible. What is the status of the extraterrestrial intelligence search now . I think were just getting in the game. Were learning how to do this and i think we would be lucky to find, even though im optimistic about life and intelligent life in the universe, and it is likely there a whole galactic internet out there, i think we would be lucky to find them now but im optimistic in the long run. Congressman johnson, i might point out that contrary to popular impression, this experiment isnt the same from daytoday. People figure were sitting around with ear phones listening to cosmic status every day, a rather tedious job if that is what it were but it is not. All the listening is done by computers. Really important point much of this experiment depend on digital technology, computers, if you will. As you know there is something called moores law, which says whatever you can buy today for a dollar you can buy twice as much for a dollar two years from now. There is this very rapid growth in the capabilities there so in fact the search is speeding up and actually speeding up exponentially. Very heavily overused word, exponentially but in fact it applies. Tell me this. I know that the improvement of technologies or, are important and yet some of the old technologies or old techniques are also still in play. How do you predict your advance ment based on what you have available to you for Research Tools . Ill just say something. Im sure dan has much to add to this but in terms of what we could do in the near future, the foreseeable future, what you really i think need to do, if you want to have a decent chance of success, mind you, this has to remain speculative. This is all like asking Chris Columbus two weeks out, hey, have you found any new continents lately . The answer would be there was only water around the ship today, and by the way yesterday, water around the ship and it will be fairly acquaos within the vicinity of the ship. He cant predict anything interesting nor can we. If you look euphemistically estimates what fraction of stars have something out there you might be able to pick up, sound like you have to look at a few million star systems to have reasonable chance of success. Weve not done that i cant. Weve done less than 1 of that as of today, but, given predictable advancements in technology, to at a few million star systems is something that can be done within two dozen years given funding to do it. Yes. [inaudible]. Captured it well. Now when we found the other life on other planets, what do you speculate we would find and what is of value, potential value . I think it is profound either way. This is not an expensive thing. Order of Million Dollars a year. Were funded by the National Science foundation, nasa, templeton foundation, some private donations. The reason i think it is profound either way, if we discover we are alone, we better take really good care of life on this planet. It is very precious. The other thing is profound too. If we find were part of a Galactic Community and get on the galactic internet and learn all their poetry, music, literature, science, we could learn a lot. I just add briefly, nobody knows what well learn. If we can decode the signal, sort of like being confronted with high row give fixes. You might figure them out. Turns out the high row give exwere made easier and Rosetta Stone and whatever. We might not figure it out, if you cod, listen to data sent by societies far in advance of us. Were hearing them, not other way around. Theyre more advanced and maybe teach you stuff, no knows. Imagine the incass find a barrel washed up on the shore from europe full of books. If they could figure out the books they would learn a lot of interesting stuff. I dont know that we will ever figure out the books but even if we dont, the important point has been made. That is we have calibrated our place not in the physical universe. Weve sort of done that but calibrated our place in the biological and more the intellectual universe. I think that is good for our souls to know how we fit in. Thank you very much. Thank you, miss johnson. The gentleman from ohio, mr. Johnson is recognized for his question. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, for both of you, how has the recent discovery of over 1700 planets by the kept lar space tell soap, how has that impacted Seti Research . If you asked astronomers 20 years ago, are there planets around other stars we think so but all that has changed. That changed with the nasa kepler mission. If you extrapolate a planets, a few thousand planets they discovered, if you extrapolate on that trillion planets in the mill which way galaxy, those are a trillion more planets than there are stars. So a lot of places for life. Okay. I think it also affected sperms, in a sense in the past we would point telescopes in the direction of stars, certain kinds of stars. Certain masses of stars. Well, dr. Shostak, would you please provide some examples of the technical contributions that seti has made to other fields . How has Seti Research benefited other areas of science . Well, i think that its benefit is less so in terms of the discovery. Obviously, we havent found e. T. If we had, we wouldnt be having this hearing, okay . But, and to my surprise, seti has not turned up any astrophysical phenomena that were astonishing as well. And that ease surprising. Normal lily, every time you build an instrument, it examines a different parameter in the space base of the universe. You find something new. So is thats instructive, that it hasnt. The kind of technology thats been developed is certainly of interest in other fields in astrongny, but i think the real value of seti is what it does in terms of the other efforts being made to find life in space. Nasa has a big effort. You know, the rovers on mars. Yes, theyre there to find the hydrology, the history of water on mars, but why are you interested . Youre interested because you want to know were there ever martians . Microbial, most likely. Are there still martians . Thats what interests people the most, okay in and seti was always, if you will, a punchline to this story that nasa had about finding, you know, traces of water on mars or burrowing through the ice on some of these moons of the outer solar system where there may be vast quantities of liquid water. Seti was, okay, we may find life, but what about intelligent life . That would be even more interesting, and thats whats missing, in fact, from the nas a saw program today. Okay. You made a comment that kind of caught my attention. Let me make sure i got it right. You said that if we hear from intelligent life out there somewhere, that they must be more advanced than us because were hearing from them and not the other way around. How can you draw that conclusion . I mean, maybe theyve been hearing from us for a long time and just dont like what we have to say . [laughter] i think its entirely possible that we are on their, in their catalog. Theyve seen oxygen in our atmosphere, and they know were out here. I think life in the universe is going to be, going to be lots of different stages. Some of its going to be microbial, some itll be trees, more sophisticated. The earth is five billion years old, some stars are ten billion years old, so to there could be a lot of advanced civilizations as well. Uhhuh, okay. Just point out, youre not going to hear from any less advanced societies, theyre not building radio transmitters. Well, yeah. Id say at least equal to, perhaps more advanced, but, you know, maybe theyve got their caller id block turned on. [laughter] i wouldnt speculate on Alien Technology and whether theyd like our television or not. [laughter] i dont know about the chances of that. But at least the level of 100 or 1,000 or even 10,000 years of our level yeah. One final, quick question for both of you. How would you define successful Seti Research . I mean, i know thats kind of a nebulous question, but finding the signal. How would you define successful . If you found a signal, and that could be corroborated. If you just find it once and its not crab rated corroborated, its not science. Its a narrow band signal, its not made by nature, its made by a transmitter, thats success. Okay. I think the most likely scenario is finding some sort of artifact of their technology, a radar signal or a navigational beacon or something that wont contain a lot of information, but well know were not alone. Okay. Thank you, mr. Chairman, i yield back. Thank you, mr. Johnson. The gentlewoman from oregon, and if you would just yield to me for ten seconds. Certainly. It was mentioned if there were other intelligence locations they would likely be more advanced than we are. Were a relatively junior galaxy, they might be two, i dont know, two billion years older than we are, and its just fascinating to think what form of life might be existent in a universe or parallel universe or another galaxy where theyve had a two billion year head start. We might not even recognize the beings we might not be able to communicate with em. None of this will be charged or counted against the gentlewomans five minutes for questioning. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, so much, doctors, for being here. I noticed in your testimony, mr. Werthimer, you said there are 24 seti scientists on the planet, and i cant think of a time in this committee where weve had a larger percentage of experts on our panel. [laughter] thank you so much for being here. And, doctor, i really am intrigued by your section in your testimony on the publics interest and how the idea of life in space is an idea that everyone grasps and is especially a ideal hook for interesting young people in science. I think thats evidenced by the full Committee Room today. One of the statements that resonated with me is it would be a cramped mind, indeed, that didnt wonder who might be out there. I really appreciate that. You said also in your testimony extraterrestrials are the unknown tribe over the hill, potential competitors or mates, but in any case, someone we would like to know more about. And i recollect a similar hearing in this committee, i believe it was last year when one of my colleagues and im fairly certain it was representative chris smith whos no longer on the Committee Said the interesting question is what do we do when we find the life on another planet . So can you talk, both of you, about whats the plan . Do we announce it to the world . Do we do research more to determine if these are friendly or collaborative . What do we do when we make the discovery, assuming that its going to happen . Dr. Shost remarks k, would you like to begin . Yes. Thats a question of great interest to the public and of great importance as well. To begin with, theres no danger, right . You tune in your favorite deejay here in d. C. On the car radio, and theres no danger that that deejays going to jump into the car next to you and give you a hard time because they dont know that youve picked them up. If we pick up a signal, they dont know that. All right . There is the question of, well, should we reply . Ill get to that in just a second. But what happens then . Suppose we do pick up the signal . It would be announced. The public has the idea that you all have a secret plan, that the government has a secret plan for what to do if we pick up a signal. As far as i can tell, there is no plan. Okay . [laughter] and we have had false alarms, and ive waited for my congressman to call me up and say, hey, you guys are pick iing up picking up a signal, what about that . And nobody in the government shows the slightest bit of interest. The New York Times will calm, right . But the government is not so interested. So what would happen is it would immediately be known that we had found the signal, and it would be known even before it had been corroborated. So there are going to be false alarms, be prepared for that. You get somebody in another ab serve story to observatory to also observe it. There are too many things that could go wrong. Mr. Werthimer, do you have anything to add to that . I think before you make a big announcement, you want to make sure its real. You ask a different telescope, different people, Different Software to verify it, then you can triangulate it, make sure its not a graduate student playing a pac on you. And understand prank on you. And understand you have some confidence, it could be some new astrophysical phenomena. So i think then you, at the point where youre pretty confident you found something, you make all the information public, the coordinates in the sky, the frequency, anything you know about the signal, and i think therell be a lot of debate about whether this is a new natural phenomena or really evidence of another civilization. A lot of people will be working on that problem. And could you also address of the 24, you say the 24 seti scientists on the planet, to what extent are other nations involved . How collaborative are we . We have a lot of discussions in this committee about International Collaboration especially in space. So can you talk about where we are as a nation compared with the other countries in the world . Yeah. Seti is quite fragile. As you said, there are 24 people doing it. About twothirds of them are in the u. S. A lot of the original ideas have come out of the u. S. But we are working with other scientists in other countries, and because its so fragile, were trying to train new people and get new ideas and get other groups because its only at a small number of institutions right now. The funding is fragile too. Its fluctuating around. The two biggest telescopes on the planet are currently funded by the National Science foundation, the Green Bank Telescope in this West Virginia, the [inaudible] telescope. Those are in funding jeopardy. It looks like one of those observatories is probably going to have to be shut down, the other is just hanging by a thread. The chinese are building a bigger telescope, theres a new one going to be built in south africa and australia. So the u. S. May not continue to lead this work. But it is now. I would find that disappointing, if that happened. And im out of time. I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, ms. Bone my chi. The gentleman from new york, mr. Collins, is recognized for his question. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I think i might ask the question everyone in this room wants to ask. Have you watched ancient aliens, and whats your comment about that series . Well start with you, dr. Shostak. Yes, i think ive been on it, actually. [laughter] more than once. The public is fascinate with the the idea that we may be being visited now or may have been visited in the past, the socalled ufo phenomenon. I personally dont share the conviction. I dont think that that would be something that, you know, all the governments of the world had managed to obfuscate, to keep secret. I dont believe that. But the idea that maybe we were visited during the time of the ancient egyptians and so forth, keep in mind that in the four and a half billion year history of the earth, the time of the ancient egyptians was yesterday, right . So, again, why were they there then . What was it that brought them to earth . I have no idea, and i dont find very good evidence. I dont think i think the pyramids, for example, were probably built by egyptians. I know that thats a radical idea for some people. [laughter] but they were very clever, and they could certainly do that. So i dont think that theres any good evidence that convinces me that we were visited in historic times. How about you, many werthimer . Ufos have nothing to do with extraterrestrials, so theres no evidence that any of these sightings i think some of these sightings are real phenomena, we get a lot of calls when the space station goes over, although some people embellish, and they say it has windows and things. And some of it is peoples a imagination, and we know that because it ties very closely to Popular Culture general jules vern started writing about flying saucers, when people watch movies, we get a lot of reports to whats tied to in the movies. And some it is deliberate hoaxes for people making money. Thank you. I think that was my only question, mr. Chairman. I yield back. [laughter] thank you, mr. Collins. The gentlewoman from maryland, ms. Edwards, is recognized for her questions. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I feel like i should have been here earlier, so i apologize. Ive enjoyed the discussion thus far and reading the testimony. You know, my Favorite Movie is contact, all right . Every year it comes out since 1997, i watch it, i dream, i think, well, you know, who knows . Whats intriguing about this conversation is the idea that and it is a little bit of hubris, right . That somehow were waiting to find them as opposed to them finding us. And maybe thats just the nature of home homo sapiens, thats kif what we do. But im a little bit curious, dr. Werthimer, in your prepared statement, you discuss the seti project which will use six telescopes to search nearby stars and stars most likely to host a planet system similar to the suns. And so the project as you describe it would examine a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum spanning from low frequencies through optical light to detect possible signals from advanced civilization. How are the target stars that you talked about identified, and how are you going to coordinate the use of the six telescopes . We are not trying to to use the telescopes all at the same time. Thats actually hard to do, so we just use the telescope, and other groups are were working with a lot of groups at universities and observatories. But typically, well use one telescope and then a month later use another telescope and so on. The stars that were targeting, instead of targeting stars that we know that have planets, it looks like all stars have planets, so were just going to target the nearest stars. So thats our plan, is just target the nearby stars. All right. And you talked also about the, you know, this notion that there are just sort of 24 of you folks, you know, most interested robustly, academically, you know, studying this. But respect there, like, a whole arent there, like, a whole network of people out in communities who kind of feed or fuel some of the research that youre doing . Seth, do you want to take that one . [laughter] dan refers to me because i dont think we know the answer to that question. In order to do this, it would be like saying, you know, sure, there are a few thousand people looking for the [inaudible] but what about the communities that are feeding that . If you dont have the instrument, its very hard to do the experiment. And the number of instruments involved here is very small. So the rest of us are really just, you know, dreaming and pretending that thats what were well thats all right. You dont have to answer that. I was not serious at all. [laughter] then i want to talk about Security Issues in the time we have left. I understand early on there was an assessment of the robustness of the seti Home Software to withstand malicious takes and penetrations. And in the earlier study you found that there had been two noteworthy attacks, and the web server was compromised. You also found later that exploiting a design flaw in your Client Server protocol that hackers had actually stolen thousands of user email addresses. Can you give us an idea of the current state of security . Um, yeah. I think in general downloading software and installing on your computer, you should be care. It actually careful. It actually turns out that setis home is one of the safest things you can ip stall on the computer, and the reason is because millions of people are using it and testing it out. And so, so and also its been running for a really long time, and its open Source Software. The software is anybody can read the software and help us, a lot of the volunteers help us write the software, and were now reporting it to cell phones which will allow each more people to participate in the search. I guess some of the question is just especially whenever you deal with open source, the challenge of the systems vulnerability. Yeah. I actually think open Source Software is actually a little safer because so many eyeballs can look at it. Okay. Im done. I think ill just go back to watching my movies. [laughter] thank you, ms. Edwards. The gentleman from florida, mr. Posey, is recognized for his questions. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and thank you for inviting these distinguished witnesses for this fascinating testimony. Very enjoyable. I go to the seti Facebook Page every day to get a little extra factoid. I learn something every day. I hadnt, i hadnt been there a single day to find that i already knew your message of the day. Very, very educational, very inspiring, obviously, very interesting and graphics always good too, and i want to thank you for that. On your disclosure i was really impressed with the number of agreements and grants. Im just really glad to know that that is saw so engaged with what youre doing there and still allow yall to have a pretty free hand to do what you do better than, i think, anybody else is doing it, obviously. And so thank you for that. Obviously, theres some curiosity about your thoughts about such things as project blue book. What do you think . First off, i want to thank you for noting. All those grants, by the way, are for the astrobiology search being conducted. Theres actually no federal money going to the search for intelligent life, but we do, the majority of our scientists are doing astrobiology, so life on mars, the outer solar system. And were glad you are. Yes. Well, so are we, i can assure you. And thats, i think, a very productive line of research as well. In terms of project blue book and the whole ufo phenomenon, as i say, i am personally quite skeptical. Onethird of americans believe that a we are being visited. Thats the result of polls that have been taken since the 1960s. That number doesnt change. And by the way, if you think this is an especially american opinion, thats wrong. Onethird of europeans, australians, japanese and so forth believe we are being visited. I do not. I honestly do not. I think if we were being visited, it would not be controversial. Its been, what, 60some years since roswell, for example. If you would ask the residents of massachusetts 60 years after columbus, do you think youre being visited by spaniards . That would not be controversial. I think if they were really here, everyone would know that. Okay, very good. Stephen hawking, i believe, made some comments about contact with extraterrestrials or other life. Your thoughts about his comments. Yeah. So this is a controversial topic about whether we should transmitt messages. Thats called active seti or met imessages to extra dress dress extra extraterrestrial intelligence. The first experiments we should do is just listening, trying to receive signals and see whats out there. We think that advanced civilizations are going to be peaceful if you watch star trek, but we dont know that, and that may be naive. So my feeling is we should be just listening for now and maybe in a thousand or 10,000 years if we dont hear anything, we should think about transmitting signals, but thats a question for all humanity. It shouldnt be up to just a few scientists, and so thats a big decision about who should speak for earth. So right now i think we should be listening. And thats, i believe, thats what hawking would say as well. Im going to disagree a little bit with my colleague here, dan. I think that theres very little danger in transmitting, and if there is, were already doing it. Yes, were not deliberately targeting the stars in general, although we have done that in the past. Nasa sent a beatles song in 2008, i believe it was, to the north star, and itll take 450 years to get there, and they may or may not like the beatles. They used a fairly powerful transmitter, but the most powerful transmitters are coming off the airports, right, for their navigation. These signals are on their way into space. Theyve already reached several thousand star systems. Any society that has the technical competence to threaten you across dozens, hundreds, thousands of light years of space, any society at that level can pick up these signals, so if youre really going to worry about this, you better shut down all the radars at the airports, and personally, i dont think that would be a very good idea. [laughter] okay. And briefly, still related, your thoughts on thorium. Sorry, im not familiar with the topic. Are you talking about Nuclear Reactors . Yeah. Im really not an expert, im sorry. Only this, if youre talking about powering spacecraft this way, you know, if you send spacecraft through some of the more interesting parts of our solar system, jupiter, saturn, when you get to saturn, the amount of sunlight has dropped by a hundred. So you cant use solar cells. You have to power the craft some way. I wouldnt worry too much about radioactivity in space, of course, because space has plenty of radioactivity. Thats the nature of the cosmos. But if youre worried about the fact that these launches could go awry and that you would land these things on earth, yes, thats a danger. But, of course, people are aware of that danger, and they try and mitigate it. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and thank both the witnesses. Thank you, mr. Posey. The gentleman from arizona, mr. Schweikert, is recognized for his question. Thank you, mr. Chairman. To our witnesses, lets see, what have we learned so far . Weve learned theres a chance that aliens dont like the beatles, which i have trouble imagining, and they dont like our television programming, and there was a couple of other things oh, yeah, and account account contact is the best movie, right . Somehow i thought thatd be funnier. [laughter] a couple of mechanical questions, i just want to get my head around some of the current scientific understanding. Lets walk through a scenario, and you tell me if its plausible or if this is current thought. Asteroid hits the world, you know, hits our earth, and rock is thrown out into, you know, the stellars. It carries dna. Does that dna survive . Doctor . Yes. This idea known as [inaudible] and im sure youre aware of it, the idea that one world could infect another world has been looked at. People have actually simulated the environment of space and put some of our earthly bacteria into a rock and put it as it were in space to see how long they could survive. You know, would the dna still be viable when it got someplace interesting . The results as i understand them suggests that, yes, if youre talking about, you know, Communicable Disease within the solar system, could a rock from mars have seeded the earth, that is possible. Theres no evidence that that occurred, but that is possible. The life would survive or would remain viable over that kind of time scales to send rocks in the solar system from one world to another. But if youre talking about seeding words in other Solar Systems at the distances of the stars, the problem is space is a harsh environment even for a rock because theres a lot of radiation, and its incredibly dry. Anything thats in there is going to be suffering desiccation for maybe hundreds of thousands, millions of years, really, before it gets there. And the general consensus that ive heard is that it wont be viable when it does. I think thats the current sort of thought right now. Yeah. So as you know, asteroids have hit the earth many times, and so itll be a really interesting question if life is found in our own solar system like, for instance, euro pa which is a moon going around earth u there could be something swimming around there. By the way, when i talk to Elementary Schools and ask them how are we going to get through the ice and see if theres something swimming, the boys all say we should use machine guns and bombs, and the girls say we should melt our way through using mirrors. Once again proving there is something in our dna thats different. [laughter] so if we do find life in our solar system, the really exciting thing to figure out is does it use the same dna, the same amino acids, the same nuke lo tides, is it identical chemistry . That would mean that rocks are going back and forth between these moons and planets and our own solar system, and it really happened in one place and was carried back and forth. As seth was talking about. Thats not very interesting. What would be much more interesting would be discovering life thats different with a different chemistry. Because if we do find Something Like that on europa or another moon or mars, that means that the universe is teeming with life. If we can find it in two different kinds of life in our own solar system, that means theres a lot of life out there. It makes the imagination wonder. Earlier the chairman and i mean this with all the love in the world was trying to say give me percentage of life out there in existence. I remember doing this sort of as a sort of thought process with one of my professors many years ago. And i guess one of the mechanisms was from the beginning until today earth has had 100 billion species or something and how many can do higher math. And sort of give you sort of and we would use that as sort of the benchmark to try to do those calculations. And i guess our understanding was its unknowable. You know . Whats out there, what isnt out there. I mean, you know, we see the world of large numbers, large planets, but, you know, these huge numbers. On earth intelligence has written several times independently, there are many intelligent creatures, although none as intelligent as us. Were not sure. We always use the math. Yeah. You can be successful in life if youre strong or fast or but you can also be successful in some evolutionary environments by being smart. And so i think there are going to be places in the universe where its advantageous to be smart. But the, i guess, and for doctor, the fun in this one is how would you ever calculate it . How would you ever sort of build your baseline to build from . And when you move from sort of hope, which is a powerful thing, to being able to put it into a calculator yes. There is often quite a leap there. I think its very difficult to estimate because we just have this one example on earth. And so i think the only way were going to find out is to do this search. Its very akin, i think, to sitting around in the bars of europe in 1700 trying to estimate the probability that any expedition sent into the deep south, any sailing expedition will find the hypothesized southern continent there. Yeah. What are the probability . Can you give me that to three figures before i fund you . You cant. You have to do the experiment. So, therefore, it becomes a leap of faith. Its a reasonable leap of faith, its a reasonable hypothesis that theres life to be found out there, even intelligence life to be found out there. We can sit around and have a lot of drinks and talk about it, but in the end, if you dont do the experiment, youll continue to have the drinks. [laughter] seeing some of our questions, there may have been a lot of drinks going on. [laughter] thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Schweikert. Thank you both for your testimony which was clearly appreciated by both members of congress as well as the audience. And i also want to thank the Herndon High School students for being here today. You had a wonderful opportunity today to hear about a fascinating subject, and i hope this will spur you on to study not only astrobiology, but other scientific subjects as well. And in case someone has an interest or wants to follow up on this subject, you might go to our committees web site which is science. House. Gov, and well have some information about this hearing on that web site as well as other things that might be of interest to you all. So thanks again for a wonderful hearing today, and we stand adjourned. [inaudible conversations] here is whats ahead. Next, a congressional hearing looks at student athletes. And later, the Supreme Court oral argument in the case of nlrb v. Canning dealing with the constitutionality of some of president obamas recess appointments. Heres a look at some of our prime time programming. On cspan at eight, a look back at the congressional investigations into the General Motors recalls. On cspan2 at eight, more booktv. Our focus will be on the past and future of money. And on cspan3, American History. Tonights theme is the civil war battle of fort stevens. Here are some of the highlights for this weekend. Friday on cspan in prime time well visit important sites in the history of the civil l rights movement. Saturday night at eight, highlights from this years new York Ideas Forum including cancer biologist andrew his el, and on sunday, q a at 8 p. M. Eastern. Friday night at eight on cspan2, in depth with reza aslan. Saturday at 10, retired neurosurgeon and columnist, ben carson. And sunday night Lawrence Goldstone on the competition between the Wright Brothers and ben curtis to be the predominant men in manned flight. Mesh history American History on friday, a look at slavery. Saturday night at eight, the 200th anniversary of the burning of washington. And sunday night at 8 p. M. , former white house chiefs of staff discuss how president s make decisions. Find our Television Schedule one week in advance at cspan. Org, and let us know what you think about the programs youre watching. Call us at 2026263400 or email us at comments cspan. Org. Join the cspan conversation; like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. The Senate Commerce Committee Held a hearing recently examining College Sports programs, academics and the potential exploitation of athletes. Some of the areas covered include athletic scholarships, campus sexual assaults, health and safety issues and the idea of compensating student athletes. Witnesses include ncaa president mark emmert who talked about some of his proposed changes. This is two hours, 45 minutes. [inaudible conversations] this hearing will come to order. And i want to thank all of you very much for coming here. Youre a bit squeezed in there. But water is on the house, so [laughter] be comfortable and be glad. College sports has an absolutely extraordinary position in the culture of our country not only have College Sports inspired incredible fan passion all across the country, but they have provided a very importants way for young men and women to, as is written, both do athletics as an avocation and get an education. Were going to sort of talk about that today. Many young people, however, athletics has provided an avenue to college they would otherwise not have existed, and its important to understand that. College athletes and athleticsoe are rooted in the notion of amateurism. And the history of that is very interesting and important goings back to the founding of the ncaa, 1906, and all the rest of it. And going back, actually torque the greeks going back to the greeks concept of amateurism. Ng playing sports is supposed to be avenue avocation. For love of c the game, not lovm of money, that is the ideal. But many people believe this notion of College Sports is add being undermined by the power and the influence of money. I remember a meeting i had in mt officeio with the three top executives of espn. Meeting i had in my office with the three top executives of espn. And it was one of those meetings in which i didnt say a word, because they just went around in circles. Each talking about what a great Business Model they had, how they had control and the power that no other broadcast system, whatever, have. How thrilled they were with it. And how they were going to make it even stronger. Theres a growing perception that college athletics, particularly division i football and basketball are notwoke indications at all. Critics of bigtime athletics say the goal is not to provide young people with a college education, but to produce a Winning Program that reached financial readers for the athletic departments and their schools. It is not, however, about the students. Theyre part of what generates the money. Its about capturing the billions of dollars of television and marketing revenues that College Sports do generate. And will generate even