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 a