[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ASTROBIOLOGY AND THE SEARCH
FOR LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 21, 2014
__________
Serial No. 113-76
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
DANA ROHRABACHER, California EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
RALPH M. HALL, Texas ZOE LOFGREN, California
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
Wisconsin DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ERIC SWALWELL, California
PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia DAN MAFFEI, New York
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SCOTT PETERS, California
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana DEREK KILMER, Washington
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
BILL POSEY, Florida ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut
CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming MARC VEASEY, Texas
DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona JULIA BROWNLEY, California
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky MARK TAKANO, California
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota ROBIN KELLY, Illinois
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma
RANDY WEBER, Texas
CHRIS COLLINS, New York
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio
C O N T E N T S
May 21, 2014
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 5
Written Statement............................................ 6
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives............................................. 7
Witnesses:
Dr. Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute
Oral Statement............................................... 8
Written Statement............................................ 10
Mr. Dan Werthimer, Director of the SETI Research Center at the
University of California, Berkeley
Oral Statement............................................... 17
Written Statement............................................ 20
Discussion....................................................... 58
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute........ 74
Mr. Dan Werthimer, Director of the SETI Research Center at the
University of California, Berkeley............................. 85
ASTROBIOLOGY AND THE SEARCH
FOR LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
----------
WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 2014
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room
2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
Chairman Smith. The Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology will come to order.
And welcome to today's hearing ``Astrobiology and the
Search for Life in the Universe.'' A couple of preliminary
announcements. One is that I want to thank C-SPAN for covering
this hearing today. That shows the importance of the hearing in
a lot of respects.
And I want to thank all the students from Herndon High
School here as well. I understand you had a choice of hearings
to attend, in fact you could attend almost any hearing you
wanted to, and you chose this one because you thought it was
the most interesting. And actually that is one of the purposes
of today's hearing, and that is to inspire students today to be
the scientists of tomorrow. And who knows? We may have some of
those scientists in the audience right now who will be inspired
by what they hear to study astrobiology or perhaps some of the
other sciences as well. So we appreciate your attendance.
I will recognize myself for an opening statement and then
the Ranking Member as well.
As we discover more planets around the stars in our own
galaxy, it is natural to wonder if we may finally be on the
brink of answering the question, ``Are we alone in the
universe?''
Finding other sentient life in the universe would be the
most significant discovery in human history. Scientists
estimate that there are 80 billion stars in the Milky Way
galaxy. To date, more than 1,700 nearby planets have been found
by the Kepler Space Telescope.
Last month, astronomers discovered the first Earth-like
planet orbiting its star at a distance where liquid water could
be present, a condition thought essential to life. Called
Kepler-186f, it is only ten percent larger than the Earth and
about 490 light years away.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which will
launch in 2017, and the James Webb Space Telescope, launching
in 2018, will help scientists discover more planets with
potential biosignatures.
The United States has pioneered the field of astrobiology
and continues to lead the world in this type of research. A
sample of professional papers published in Science magazine
between 1995 and 2013 illustrates the significant growth and
growing popularity of the field of astrobiology. Between 1995
and 2012, the number of papers published on astrobiology
increased 10 times and the 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 2-day
astrobiology symposium on what the societal 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 the cosmic noise and
interference of human-made satellites and spacecraft to find
anomalies that could be signals from civilizations elsewhere in
the universe.
The Allen Telescope Array at the SETI Institute, financed
by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and the Arecibo telescope
in Puerto Rico are two well-known locations for conducting
radio astronomy searches for life in the universe.
Recently, radio astronomers have detected pulsed signals
that last only a few milliseconds. These ``fast radio bursts''
as they are called have caused scientists to speculate as to
their cause. Some scientists hypothesize they could be from
stars colliding or from an extraterrestrial intelligent source.
Other astronomers search for laser light pulses, instead of
radio waves. Researchers at the SETI Optical Telescope, run by
the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Columbus
Optical SETI Observatory and the University of California at
Berkeley, among others, use optical telescopes to try to detect
nanosecond pulses or flashes of light distinct from pulsars or
other naturally occurring phenomena.
I hope today's hearing will enable us to learn more about
how research in astrobiology continues to expand this
fascinating frontier. The unknown and unexplored 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.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
Prepared Statement of Chairman Lamar S. Smith
As we discover more planets around the stars in our own galaxy, it
is natural to wonder if we may finally be on the brink of answering the
centuries' old question, ``Are we alone in the universe?''
Finding other sentient life in the universe would be the most
significant discovery in human history. Scientists estimate that there
are 800 billion stars in the Milky Way. To date, more than 1,700 nearby
planets have been found by the Kepler Space Telescope.
Last month, astronomers discovered the first Earth-like planet
orbiting its star at a distance where liquid water could be present, a
condition thought essential to life. Called Kepler 186f, it is only 10%
larger than Earth and is 490 light years away.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which will launch in
2017, and the James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018, will help
scientists discover more planets with potential biosignatures.
The United States has pioneered the field of astrobiology and
continues to lead the world in this type of research. A sample of
professional papers published in Science magazine between 1995 and 2013
illustrates the significant growth and growing popularity of the field
of astrobiology. Between 1995 and 2012, the number of papers published
on astrobiology increased ten times and the 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 two day astrobiology symposium on what
the societal 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 the cosmic noise and interference of human-made
satellites and spacecraft to find anomalies that could be signals from
civilizations elsewhere in the universe.
The Allen Telescope Array at the SETI Institute, financed by
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and the Arecibo telescope in Puerto
Rico are two well-known locations for conducting radio astronomy
searches for life in the universe.
Recently radio astronomers have detected pulsed signals that last
only a few milliseconds. These ``Fast Radio Bursts'' have caused
scientists to speculate as to their cause. Some scientists hypothesize
they could be from stars colliding or from an extraterrestrial
intelligent source. Other astronomers search for laser light pulses,
instead of radio waves. Researchers at the SETI Optical Telescope, run
by the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Columbus
Optical SETI Observatory and the University of California at Berkeley,
among others, use optical telescopes to try to detect nanosecond pulses
or flashes of light distinct from pulsars or other naturally occurring
phenomena.
I hope today's hearing will enable us to learn more about how
research in astrobiology continues to expand this fascinating frontier.
The unknown and unexplored 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.
Chairman Smith. That concludes my opening statement, and
the Ranking Member, the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Johnson, is
recognized for hers.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good
morning. In the interest of saving time I will forgo making an
opening statement and instead I will simply want to welcome Dr.
Shostak and Dr. Werthimer to this morning's hearing on the
search for life, including intelligent life, in outer space.
You both are distinguished researchers and I know that you will
have thoughtful testimony to present, and this afternoon will
determine whether we will have researchers to continue this.
So thank you and I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
And I would like to introduce our witnesses at this point.
Our first witness, Dr. Seth Shostak, is a Senior Astronomer
at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. He has held
this position since 2001. Dr. Shostak has spent much of his
career conducting radio astronomy research on galaxies. Dr.
Shostak has written more than 400 published magazine and web
articles on various topics in astronomy, technology, film, and
television. He has also edited and contributed to nearly a
dozen scientific and popular astronomy books. He has authored
four books, including ``Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on
Extraterrestrial Life'' and ``Confessions of an Alien Hunter: a
Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.'' You can
hear him each week as host of a one-hour-long radio program on
astrobiology entitled ``Big Picture Science.''
Dr. Shostak received his bachelor's in physics from
Princeton and his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the California
Institute of Technology.
Our second witness, Dr. Dan Werthimer, has worked at the
Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley since 1983. He is
currently the Director of several of the lab's centers,
including the SETI Research Center and the Center for Astronomy
Signal Processing and Electronics Research.
Additionally, Mr. Werthimer serves as Chief Scientist for
the lab's SETI@home program and Associate Director of their
Berkeley Wireless Research Center. Mr. Werthimer co-authored
``SETI 2020'' and was the editor of ``Bioastronomy: Molecules,
Microbes, and Extraterrestrial Life'' and ``Astronomical and
Biochemical Origins and the Search for Life in the Universe.''
His research has been featured in many broadcast news
stories such as on ABC and CBS and many major newspapers and
magazines. His work also has reached a younger audience through
Scholastic Weekly, a science magazine for kids.
Mr. Werthimer received his bachelor's and master's degrees
in physics and astronomy from San Francisco State University.
I will recognize to start us off today Dr. Shostak and then
we will go to Mr. Werthimer.
TESTIMONY OF DR. SETH SHOSTAK,
SENIOR ASTRONOMER AT THE SETI INSTITUTE
Dr. Shostak. Thank you, Congressman Smith, for the
opportunity to be here.
I am just going to give you a few big-picture thoughts on
the search for life and in particular intelligent life, the
kind of life that could uphold its side of the conversation as
opposed to the microbial sort of life. This is obviously a
subject of great interest to many people.
Let me just back up and say that when you read in the paper
about the discovery of a new planet or something, water on
Mars, you are looking at 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 that is where the big
money is. Rovers on Mars, the moons of the outer solar system.
There are at least a half a dozen other worlds that might have
life in our solar system. 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 decades.
The third horse in that race is SETI, Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and that idea, if you have seen
the movie Contact you know what the idea is, is to eavesdrop on
signals that are either deliberately or accidentally leaked off
somebody else's world. That makes sense because in fact even
we, only 100 years after Tesla and Marconi and the invention of
practical radio, we already have the technology that would
allow us to send bits of information across light years of
distance to putative extraterrestrials.
Let me just tell you why I think they are out there, by the
way. That--you know, it is unproven whether there is any life
beyond Earth. That is the situation today. You have heard me
say twice now that I think the situation is going to change
within everyone's lifetime in this room. Okay. And the reason
is we are--the universe is a fecund place for life. Congressman
Smith has mentioned the number of stars in our galaxy. With
respect, that number is actually rather larger. It is something
like 200 to 400 billion stars, but we now know that at least 70
percent of them have planets. Recent results from NASA's Kepler
telescope, an astoundingly successful instrument, suggest that
one in five stars may have planets that are cousins of the
Earth. What that means is that 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. Okay. Tens of billions. And if
that isn't adequate for your requirements, let me point out
there are 150 billion other galaxies we can see with our
telescopes, each with a similar complement of Earthlike worlds.
What that means is that the numbers are so astounding that
if this is the only planet on which not only life but
intelligent life has arisen, then we are extraordinarily
exceptional. It is like buying trillions of lottery tickets and
none of them is a winner. That would be very, very unusual. And
although everybody likes to think that they are special, and I
am sure you all are, maybe we are not that special. Certainly
the history of astronomy shows that every time we thought we
were special, we were wrong.
So what has been done so far, we have had various kinds of
radio searches. I won't detail the technology. We have looked
at much of the sky at fairly low sensitivity over a limited
range of radio wavelengths, radio sections of the band. We have
looked in particular directions at a few thousand star systems.
In other words, we have just begun the search. The fact that we
haven't found anything means nothing. It is like looking for
megafauna in Africa and giving up after you have only examined
one city block. And the reason the search has been so cramped
and constricted so far is simply, to be honest, the fact that
there is no funding for this. It is all privately funded. The
total number of people in the world that do SETI for a living
is fewer than the number of people in any row in the audience
here behind me. That is the world total for this endeavor.
When are we going to find them? You have already heard me
suggest that that may happen rather quickly. Let me just 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. It is very easy to make fun of this. On
the other hand, it would have been easy to make fun of
Ferdinand Magellan's idea to sail around the Earth or Captain
Cook to map the South Pacific. It is exploration. That is what
this is.
The consequences are always, shall we say, salubrious. To
find that there is life out there, intelligent life, would
calibrate our position in the universe. It would, as
Congressman Smith says, probably be the greatest discovery that
humankind could ever make, and what is important is this is the
first generation that has both the knowledge and the technology
to do that.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Shostak follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. Shostak.
And, Mr. Werthimer.
TESTIMONY OF MR. DAN WERTHIMER,
DIRECTOR OF THE SETI RESEARCH CENTER
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
Mr. Werthimer. Thanks for the opportunity--thank you for
the opportunity to talk to you about this question, are we
alone? Is anybody out there?
Can you guys show the slides? I want to walk you through
some of the SETI experiments that we and other people are
doing.
Mr. Werthimer. So, as Seth mentioned, this NASA Kepler
mission, from that we have learned that there are a trillion
planets in our Milky Way galaxy. That is more planets than
there are stars, lots of places for life. And we have learned
that a lot of these planets are what we call Goldilocks
planets, at the right distance where it is not too hot, not too
cold, rocky planets, some have liquid water. So there could be
a lot of life out there.
So how are we getting in touch? Well, one of the ideas is
that earthlings have been sending off radio, television, radar
signals out into space for the last 75 years. The early
television shows like I Love Lucy, Ed Sullivan have gone past
10,000 stars. The nearby stars have seen the Simpsons. So you
could turn that around. If we are broadcasting, maybe other
civilizations are sending signals in our direction either
leaking signals the way that we unintentionally send off
signals or maybe a deliberate signal.
They could be sending laser signals, and there are a number
of projects looking for laser signals. This is a project that
Harvard University, a very clever project, this is a project at
Lick Observatory. There is also a project at the--in Hawaii at
the Keck Telescope looking for laser signals.
People are also looking for radio signals. Our group uses
the world's largest radio antenna. We call it a radio
telescope. This is the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. It is
1,000 feet in diameter. It holds 10 billion bowls of
cornflakes. We haven't 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. We figured out
a way to use the telescope at the same time that other
scientists are using it so we can actually collect data all
year round, all day. We are collecting data right now as we
talk to you.
Now, that is actually a problem. So even though we have got
the world's largest telescope all year round, it creates an
enormous amount of data. And to analyze the data we asked
volunteers for help. They--if you--you can help us by running a
program on your home computer or your laptop or your desktop
computer. You install a program called SETI@home. It is a
screensaver program, and the way--we take the data from the
world's largest telescope and we break it up into little
pieces. Everybody gets a different piece of the sky to analyze.
Then you install this program and it pops up when you go out
for a cup of coffee and the 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 takes a few days to analyze that data looking for
interesting signals. And then when it finds interesting
signals, it sends them back to Berkeley and then you get a new
chunk of data, different part of the sky to work on.
If you are the lucky one that finds that faint murmur from
a distant civilization, you might get the Nobel Prize, but
there is a catch. The Nobel Prize--you have to maybe share with
a lot of people. There are millions of people that have
downloaded the SETI@home screensaver. They are split out into
200 countries. It is--together, the volunteers have formed one
of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet and they have
enabled the most sensitive search for extraterrestrial signals
that anybody has ever done. So we are very grateful to the
volunteers.
And now we have 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 is climate
prediction projects, there is a gravity wave project, there is
protein folding. You can look for malaria drugs, HIV drugs,
cancer drugs and you can allocate how you want your spare
computing cycles to be used on your home computer.
One of the new projects we are working on is called
Panchromatic SETI, and we are asking universities and
observatories around the world to look at a lot of different
wavelength bands, a lot of different frequencies. We are
targeting the very nearest stars and we are trying to cover all
the different bands that come through the Earth's atmosphere.
We are looking at radio frequencies, we are looking at infrared
frequencies or wavelengths, and we are looking at also optical
frequencies looking for laser signals. And this will be an
extremely comprehensive search because we have got eight
different telescopes that we are using and looking at all these
different bands but only targeting the nearby stars.
Another project that we are just launching this year is
called Interplanetary Eavesdropping, and the idea of this
project is that there may be signals going back and forth
between two planets in a distant solar system. For instance,
maybe eventually we will have machines or people on Mars and we
will have radio communication or laser communication between
our two planets. Well, put it the other way. A 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. And now with the Kepler
spacecraft we know exactly when two planets in a distant solar
system are lined up with Earth so we can schedule our
observations and target that and see if we can intercept those
signals going back and forth between two distant planets. We
are using that--the Green Bank telescope in West Virginia to do
that experiment.
While we haven't found ETs so far but we have made a lot of
interesting discoveries. We have discovered a planet made out
of solid diamond. We have made the first maps of the black hole
of the center of the galaxy. These instruments are used in all
kinds of things, in brain research which may eventually control
prosthetic arms, but we haven't found ET so far. We are still
working on it. We are just getting in the game. We have only
had radio 100 years. We are just learning how to do it. It is
like looking for a needle in a haystack but I am optimistic in
the long run.
The reason I am optimistic in the long run is that the SETI
is limited by computing technology, which is growing
exponentially. It is limited by telescope technology. China is
building a huge telescope, bigger than Arecibo. The Australians
and South Africans and the Europeans are working on a huge
telescope made out of thousands of dishes combined to make a
giant telescope.
And I think I will stop there. I have got a couple of poems
that I could read you from the volunteers but I am out of time.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Werthimer follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
Chairman Smith. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Werthimer.
Thank you both for your excellent testimony, and actually
you have anticipated my questions a little bit but I would
still like to go forward with them.
And let me address the first question to both of you all
but starting with Dr. Shostak. And it is this, kind of a two-
part question. What do you think--and I can anticipate your
answer a little bit on the basis of your statement--but what do
you think is the possibility of microbial life being 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 you think is the likelihood of finding
either microbial life or intelligent life in the universe, two
different kind of questions, Dr. Shostak.
Dr. Shostak. Well, the probability of life of course is
hard to estimate because what we do know now and something we
didn't know until very recently, even 10, 20 years ago, is that
there are habitats that could support life. What astronomy has
proven in the last 500 years is that the entire universe is
made out of the same stuff, right. The most distant galaxies
have the same 92 elements that were on the wall in your 9th
grade classroom. So this means that if you have taken chemistry
in school you don't have to take it again if you move to
another galaxy. It is all the same everywhere.
We know that the building blocks are there. We now know
that there are going to be plenty of planets where you have
liquid water and an atmosphere, the kind of salubrious
conditions that you have in Hyattsville, for example, so that
life could arise on any of these places.
We also know that life began on Earth very, very quickly.
Now this is only a sample of one, so it is not entirely
convincing, but it does suggest that it wasn't very difficult
for life to get a foothold on this planet, and maybe elsewhere.
So life I think is perhaps not so hard to get started. That is
sort of the general impression among scientists. But what they
believe is not so important; it is finding it that is
important.
The second part of your question, what about intelligent
life, that is a lot harder. The Earth has had life we know for
at least 3.5 billion, probably 4 billion years, almost since
the beginning. This place has been carpeted with life and
almost all of that time it required a microscope to see it. It
was all microbial. Only in the last 500 million years did we
get multicellular life, eventually trilobites, dinos, you know
the whole story, okay.
That opens up the question, well, you know, if I give you a
million worlds with life, what fraction of them is ever going
to cook up something as clever as you all? And the answer to
that is we don't know the answer to that. However, there are
indirect suggestions that it will happen given enough time
simply because we are not the only species that has gotten
clever in the past 50 million years. If you have dogs and cats
at home, they are cleverer than the dinosaurs. Intelligence
does pay off.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Dr. Shostak.
By the way, you have made a point that I might emphasize
and that is that 20 years ago we hadn't detected a single
planet outside our solar system. Now, we are up to close to
2000 so it is almost exponential growth in astrobiology
research.
Mr. Werthimer.
Mr. Werthimer. I suspect the universe is teaming with
microbial life. It would be bizarre if we are alone but I don't
know that for sure. The intelligence is going to be rarer, but
because there are trillion planets, I believe it is going to
happen often. It has happened several times on this planet and
it is likely to arise elsewhere.
Chairman Smith. And as you would put it, at 100 percent
then?
Mr. Werthimer. 99.
Chairman Smith. Yeah, 99.9999 and strung on out. Okay.
Good.
The next question, Mr. Werthimer, let me follow up with
you. And by the way, as far as the SETI@home screensaver goes,
that would be something for the students here 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, so maybe we will
talk some more. Maybe the government needs to change its
policy; I am not sure which.
But let me ask you what are the advantages and
disadvantages of radio SETI versus optical SETI?
Mr. Werthimer. There are lots of pros and cons. Lasers are
good for point-to-point communication and lots of bits per
second, lots of data. I think the best strategy is a multiple
strategy. We should be looking for all kinds of different
signals and not put all our money in one basket.
It is hard to predict what other civilizations are doing.
If you had asked me a 100 years ago what to look for I would
have said smoke signals, so we tried to launch a new SETI
project, a new idea every year.
Chairman Smith. Okay. And, Dr. Shostak, anything to add to
the advantages or disadvantages of radio versus optical SETI?
Dr. Shostak. I should point out that they are both sort of
different colors of the same thing, in fact literally different
colors because they are both electromagnetic means of
communication and we use both in our telecommunications here on
Earth and I suspect the aliens will as well.
I have to say that just about every week I get an email
from somebody who says you guys are looking for radio signals?
That is so old school. The extraterrestrials, assuming they are
out there, will use something much more sophisticated than that
and I am not sure what that is. That depend on physics we don't
know. And one shouldn't discount a technology simply because it
has been around a while. We use the wheel every day. That is a
pretty old technology. I suspect we will continue to use the
wheel for a long time.
Chairman Smith. Okay. And thank you both for your answers
to my questions.
And the Ranking Member Ms. Johnson is recognized for her
questions.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. I am trying very hard to
ask something that sounds sensible.
What is the status of the extraterrestrial intelligence
research now?
Mr. Werthimer. So I think we are just getting in the game;
we are learning how to do this and I think we would be lucky to
find--even though I am optimistic about life and intelligent
life in the universe and it is likely there is a whole galactic
internet out there, I think we would be lucky to find them now
but I am optimistic in the long run.
Dr. Shostak. Congressman Johnson, I might point out that
contrary to popular impression, this experiment isn't the same
from day-to-day. People figure we are sitting around with
earphones listening in to cosmic static every day, a rather
tedious job if that is what it were. But it is not. All the
listening is done by computers.
But the really important point is that much of this
experiment depends on digital technology, computers if you
will. And as you know, there is something called Moore's law
which says that 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 this search is speeding up and it is actually
speeding up exponentially, a very heavily overused word
exponentially, but in fact it applies.
Ms. Johnson. Tell me this. I know that the improvement of
technologies are important and yet some of the old technologies
or old techniques are also still in play. How do you predict
your advancement based on what you have available to you for
research tools?
Dr. Shostak. I will just say something. I am sure Dan has
much to add to this. But in terms of that we can 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--and mind
you, this has to remain speculative; I mean this is all like
asking Chris Columbus two weeks out of Cadiz, you know, hey,
have you found any new continents lately? And his answer would
be, well, there was only water around the ship today, and by
the way also yesterday water around the ship and tomorrow it is
going to be fairly aqueous in the vicinity of the ship, okay.
So he can't predict when anything interesting is going to
happen, nor can we.
But if you look at what are called euphemistically
estimates--and they are guesses--as to what fraction of stars
out there that house somebody that you might be able to pick
up, it sounds like you have to look at a few million star
systems to have a reasonable chance of success. We can't do
that today. We have not that today. We have done less than one
percent of that as of today, okay. But given the predictable
advancements in technology, to look at a few million star
systems is something that can be done within two dozen years
given, you know, the funding to do it.
Mr. Werthimer. Seth captured it well.
Ms. Johnson. Now, when we find the other life on other
planets, what do you speculate we would find and what is of
value or potential value?
Mr. Werthimer. I think it is profound either way. This is
not an expensive thing, of order $1 million a year we are
founded by National Science Foundation, NASA, Templeton
Foundation, some private donations.
The reason I think it is profound either way if we discover
that we are alone, we had better take really good care of life
on this planet. It is very precious.
And the other thing that is profound, too, if we are--find
that we are part of a galactic community and get on the
galactic internet and learn all their poetry, music,
literature, science, we could learn a lot.
Dr. Shostak. I would just add briefly nobody knows what we
will learn. If we can decode this signal, this is sort of like
being confronted with hieroglyphics. You know, you might be
able to figure them out. In the case of the hieroglyphics, it
wasn't so hard. It turns out the hieroglyphics were written by
humans so that made it a lot easier. And there was also the
Rosetta Stone and whatever.
So we might not ever figure it out, okay. If you could, you
would be listening to data being sent by societies that are far
in advance of us because we are hearing them, not the other way
around. So they are more advanced and maybe they teach you some
very important stuff. Who knows? I mean imagine that the Incas
find a barrel that is washed up on the shore, you know, maybe
from Europe and it is filled with books. If they could ever
figure out the books, they would learn a lot of interesting
stuff. I don't know that we will ever figure out the books, but
even if we don't, the important point has been made, and that
is we have calibrated our place not in the physical universe,
we have sort of done that, but calibrated our place in the
biological and even more--the intellectual universe. And I
think that that is maybe good for our souls to know how we fit
in.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. My time has expired.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Johnson, is recognized for his
questions.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, for both of you, how has the recent discovery of
over 1,700 planets by the Kepler space telescope--how has that
impacted SETI research?
Mr. Werthimer. If you had asked astronomers 20 years ago
are there planets going around other stars, we would have said,
well, we think so but we don't know. And that has all changed
now. And a lot of it is due to NASA's Kepler mission. And if
you extrapolate on the planets, which are a few thousand
planets that they have discovered, if you extrapolate on that,
there are a trillion planets in the Milky Way galaxy. That is
about three or four times more planets that there are stars, so
that has got a lot of places for life.
Mr. Johnson. Okay.
Dr. Shostak. I think that it has also affected the
experiments in the sense that in the past we would point the
telescopes in the direction of stars, certain kinds of stars,
certain masses of stars, certain brightnesses of stars. Those
stars were the ones that we thought might have an Earthlike
planet, but we didn't know. We now know two things. One, as Dan
has just mentioned, we know that the majority of stars have
planets. So you can just look at a random star and feel fairly
confident that it has planets. But more than that, we are
beginning to get some indication from Kepler what fraction of
stars have planets that are sort of like the Earth, and that
fraction is not one in a million, it is not 1 in 1,000, it is
not 1 in 100. It may be one in five. So you look at, you know,
50 star systems and you have examined 10 Earthlike planets. So
in some sense it has made the search much more straightforward.
We just look at all the nearby stars we can.
Mr. Johnson. Okay. Well, Dr. Shostak, would you please
provide some examples of the technical contributions that SETI
has made to astronomy and other fields? For example, how has
SETI research benefited other areas of science?
Dr. Shostak. Well, I think that its benefit is less so in
terms of the discovery. Obviously we haven't found ET. If we
had, we wouldn't be having this hearing, okay. But--and to my
surprise, I have to say SETI has not turned up any
astrophysical phenomena that were unexpected as well, okay. And
that is surprising. Normally, the history--the precedent in
astronomy is that every time you build an instrument that
examines a different if you will parameter in the phase space
of the universe, you find something new. So it is instructive
that it has not.
The kind of technology that has been developed is certainly
of interest to other fields in astronomy. But I think the real
value of SETI is not so much in terms of what it does to
astronomy but 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, they are there to find the hydrology,
the history of water on Mars, but why are you interested in the
history of water on Mars? You are interested because you want
to know were there ever Martians, you know, microbial most
likely, or are there still Martians? That is what interests
people the most.
And SETI was always, if you will, a punch line to this
story that NASA had about finding, you know, the traces of
water on Mars or burrowing through the ice on Europa and
Enceladus, some of these moons of the outer solar system where
there may be vast quantities of liquid water, that sort of
thing.
SETI was always that, okay, life-- we may find life, but
what about intelligent life? That would be even more
interesting. And that is what is missing from the NASA program
today.
Mr. Johnson. Okay. You made a comment just a few minutes
ago 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 we
are hearing from them and not the other way around. How can you
draw that conclusion? I mean maybe they have been hearing from
us for a long time and just don't like what we have to say.
Mr. Werthimer. Um-hum. I think it is entirely possible that
we are on their--in their catalog. They have seen oxygen in our
atmosphere and they know we are out here. And I think life in
the universe is going to be--there is going to be lots of
different stages. Some of it is going to be microbial, some of
it will be trees, more sophisticated. The Earth is 5 billion
years old, some stars are 10 billion years old, so there could
be a lot of advanced civilizations as well.
Mr. Johnson. Um-hum. Okay.
Dr. Shostak. Just to point out that you are not going to
hear from any less advanced societies. They are not building
radio transmitters.
Mr. Johnson. Well, yeah, I would say----
Dr. Shostak. That is for sure.
Mr. Johnson. I would say at least equal to, perhaps more
advanced, but, you know, maybe they got their caller ID block
turned on or something.
Dr. Shostak. It could be. I wouldn't speculate on alien
sociology and whether they would like our television or not so
I don't know about that. But the chances that if they are at
least at our level that they are within 100 or even 1000 or
even 10,000 years of our level is simply on statistical grounds
highly uncertain. If you hear from somebody, they are way
beyond you.
Mr. Johnson. Yeah. One final quick question for both of
you. How would you define successful SETI research? I mean I
know that is kind of a nebulous question but----
Dr. Shostak. Finding the signal.
Mr. Johnson. --how would you define it successful?
Dr. Shostak. If you found a signal that could be
corroborated. If you just find it once and you can't find it
again, it is not science. So if you find a signal that is
moving across the sky the way the stars do because of the
rotation of the Earth, it is a narrow band signal, it is not
made by nature, it is made by a transmitter, that is success.
Mr. Johnson. Right. Okay.
Mr. Werthimer. 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 won't contain a lot of
information but we will know we are not alone.
Mr. Johnson. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.
The gentlewoman from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici, is recognized
for her questions. And if the gentlewoman will just yield to me
for 10 seconds.
Ms. Bonamici. Certainly.
Chairman Smith. It was mentioned a while ago that the
likelihood is if there were other intelligent civilizations,
they would likely be far and--more advanced than we are. We are
a relatively junior galaxy. They might be two--I don't know,
two billion years older than we are and it is just fascinating
to think what form of life might be existent in a universe or a
parallel universe or another galaxy where they have had a two
billion year head start. We might not even recognize the
sentient beings. We might not be able to communicate with them,
but that is just one of the reasons why we are fascinated by
the subject.
And none of this will be counted or charged against the
gentlewoman's five minutes for questions.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you so much, Dr. Shostak and Mr. Werthimer, for being
here. I noticed in your testimony, Mr. Werthimer, that you said
that there are 24 SETI scientists on the planet and I can't
think of a time in this Committee were we have had a larger
percentage of experts on our panel. So thank you both so much
for being here. I really appreciate it.
And, Dr. Shostak, I really am intrigued by your section in
your testimony on the public's interest and how the idea of
life in space is an idea that everyone grasps and is especially
an ideal hook for interesting young people in science. I think
that is evidenced by the full Committee room today.
One of the statements that resonated with me is ``it would
be a cramped mind indeed that didn't 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 I am fairly certain it was Representative
Chris Smith, who is 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 what is the plan? Do we
announce it to the world? Do we do research more to determine
if these are friendly or collaborative? Or what do we do when
we make the discovery, assuming that it is going to happen?
Dr. Shostak, would you like to begin?
Dr. Shostak. Yes. That is a question of great interest to
the public and of great importance as well. To begin with,
there is no danger. You tune in your favorite DJ here in D.C.
on the car radio and there is no danger that that DJ is going
to jump into the car next to you and give you a hard time
because they don't know that you have picked them up. So if we
pick up a signal, they don't know that.
There is the question of, well, should we reply? I will get
to that in just a second. But what happens then? Suppose we do
pick up this 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. And we have had false alarms
and I have waited for my Congressman to call me up and say,
hey, you guys are picking up a signal. What about that? And
nobody in the government shows the slightest bit of interest to
be quite honest. What happens is that the media start calling
up, the New York Times will call up, right, but the media--or,
sorry, the government is not so interested.
So what would happen is that it would immediately be known
that we had found this signal and it would be known even before
it had been corroborated. So there are going to be false
alarms. Be prepared for that. But what you do is you get
somebody in another observatory to also observe it. You would
not believe it yourself if you were the only ones to find it.
There are too many things that could go wrong, okay.
Ms. Bonamici. Mr. Werthimer, do you have anything to add to
that?
Mr. Werthimer. Yeah. I think before you make a big
announcement you want to make sure it is real. You ask a
different telescope with different people, different software,
different equipment to see if they can verify it. Then you can
triangulate, make sure it is coming from something outside. You
make sure it is not a graduate student playing a prank on you.
And once you have some confidence that you have found
something, you may not know what it is. It could be some new
astrophysical phenomena. When pulsars were discovered, they
thought maybe they had found little green men. So I think you--
then you--at the point where you are pretty confident that you
have found something, you make all the information public, the
coordinates in the sky, the frequency, anything you know about
the signal, and then I think there will be a lot of debate
about whether there is some new natural phenomena or this is
really evidence of another civilization. A lot of people will
be working on that problem.
Ms. Bonamici. 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----
Mr. Werthimer. Yeah.
Ms. Bonamici. --on this issue?
Mr. Werthimer. SETI is quite fragile. As you said, there
are 24 people doing it. There are about two thirds of them in
the United States. The United States is leading this effort and
a lot of the original ideas have come out of the United States.
But there is--we are working with other scientists in other
countries, and because it is so fragile, we are trying to train
new people and get new ideas and get other groups because it is
only at a very small number of institutions right now. The
funding is fragile, too. It is fluctuating around.
The two biggest telescopes on the planet are currently
funded by the National Science Foundation, the Green Bank
telescope in West Virginia, the Arecibo 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. There is a new one going to be built in South Africa
and Australia. So the United States may not continue to lead
this work but it is now.
Ms. Bonamici. I would find that disappointing if that
happened.
And then I am out of time. I yield back the balance of my
time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici.
And the gentleman from New York, Mr. Collins, is recognized
for his questions.
Mr. Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think I might ask the question everyone in this room
wants to ask. Have you watched Ancient Aliens and what is your
comment about that series?
We will start with you, Dr. Shostak.
Dr. Shostak. Yes, I think I have been on it actually, more
than once. The public is fascinated with the idea that we may
be being visited now or may have been visited in the past, the
so-called UFO phenomenon. I personally don't share the
conviction that we are being visited. I don't think that that
would be something that, you know, all the governments of the
world had managed to obfuscate, to keep secret. I don't think--
I don't 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
4.5 billion year history of the Earth the time of 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 don't find very good evidence. I don't think--I think the
pyramids, for example, were probably built by Egyptians. I know
that that is a radical idea for some people but the Egyptians
were very clever and they could certainly do that.
So I don't think that there is any good evidence that
convinces me that we were visited in historic times.
Mr. Collins. How about you, Mr. Werthimer?
Mr. Werthimer. UFOs have nothing to do with
extraterrestrials, so even though I am optimistic with life,
there is 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 people's imagination and we know that because it ties
very closely to popular culture. When Jules Verne wrote about
flying saucers, everybody sees--started seeing flying saucers.
Before that, people saw angels. When people watch movies, then
we get a lot of reports that are tied to what is in the movies.
And some of it is actually deliberate hoaxes, you know, for
people making money.
Mr. Collins. Yeah. Thank you. I think that was my only
question, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Collins.
The gentlewoman from Maryland, Ms. Edwards, is recognized
for her questions.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I feel like I should
have been here earlier so I apologize. I have enjoyed the
discussion thus far and reading the testimony.
You know, my favorite movie is Contact, right, so every
year it comes out since 1997 I watch it. I dream. I think,
well, you know, who knows? What is intriguing about this
conversation is the idea that--and it is a little bit of
hubris, right, that somehow we are waiting to find them as
opposed to them finding us. And maybe that is just the nature
of Homo sapiens. That is kind of what we do.
But I am a little bit curious. Dr. Werthimer, in your
prepared statement you discuss the panchromatic SETI project,
which will use six telescopes to search nearby stars and stars
most likely to host an exoplanet system similar to the sun's.
And so the project as you described 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
have talked about identified and how are you going to
coordinate the use of the six telescopes?
Mr. Werthimer. We are not trying to use the telescopes all
at the same time. That is actually hard to do so we just--we
use a telescope. And other groups are--we are working with a
lot of groups at universities and observatories. But typically,
we will use one telescope and then a month later we will use
another telescope, and so on.
The stars that we are targeting, we--instead of targeting
stars that we know have planets because of Kepler spacecraft,
it looks like all stars have planets, so we are just going to
target the nearest stars. So that is our plan is just target
the nearby stars.
Ms. Edwards. Great. And you talked also about this notion
that there are just sort of 24 of you folks most interested
robustly, academically studying this, but aren't there like a
whole--there is a whole network of people out in communities
who kind of feed or fuel some of the research that you are
doing?
Mr. Werthimer. Seth, you want to take that one?
Dr. Shostak. Dan refers to me because I don't 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 Higgs Boson but what about the communities that
are feeding that? If you don't have the instrument, it is very
hard to do the experiment. And the number of instruments
involved here is very small.
Ms. Edwards. So the rest of us are really just, you know,
dreaming and pretending that that is what we are----
Dr. Shostak. Well--
Ms. Edwards. That is all right. You don't have to answer
that. I was not serious at all. And then I want to talk about
security issues in the time that we have left.
I understand that early on there was an assessment of the
robustness of the SETI's home software to withstand malicious
attacks and penetrations. And in the earlier study you found
that there had been two noteworthy attacks and the web server
was compromised. And 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?
Mr. Werthimer. Yeah. I think in general downloading
software and installing it on your computer, you should be
careful. It actually turns out that SETI@home is one of the
safest things you can install on the computer, and the reason
is because millions of people are using it and testing it out,
and so--and also it has been running for a really long time and
it is open source software. The software is--anybody can read
the software and help us--a lot of the volunteers actually help
us write the software and we are now reporting it to cell
phones so you can run it on a cell phone, which will allow us--
a lot of people--even more people to participate in the search.
Ms. Edwards. I guess some of the question is just the--
when--especially whenever you deal with open source, the
challenge of the system's vulnerability.
Mr. Werthimer. Yeah. I actually think open source software
is actually a little safer because so many eyeballs can look at
it.
Ms. Edwards. Okay. I am done. I think I will just go back
to watching my movies.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Ms. Edwards.
The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Posey, is recognized for
his questions.
Mr. Posey. 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, learn something every day. I hadn't been there a
single day to find that I already knew your message of the day,
very educational, very inspiring, obviously very interesting,
and the graphics are 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. I am just really glad to know that
NASA is so engaged with what you are doing there and still
allow you all to have a pretty free hand to do what you do,
better I think than anybody else is doing it obviously. And so
thank you for that.
Obviously there is some curiosity about your thoughts about
such things as Project Blue Book. What do you think?
Dr. Shostak. First off, I want to thank you for noting all
those grants, by the way, are for the astrobiology research
being conducted at SETI Institute. There is actually no federal
money going to the search for intelligent life.
Mr. Posey. Right.
Dr. Shostak. But we do--the majority of our scientists are
doing astrobiology, so life on Mars, the outer solar system. In
terms of--
Mr. Posey. And we are glad you are.
Dr. Shostak. Yes. Well, so are we. I can assure you. And
that is, I think, a very productive line of research as well.
In terms of Project Blue Book and the whole UFO phenomenon,
I am personally quite skeptical. One-third of Americans
believe, as I say, that we are being visited. That is the
result of polls that have been taken since the 1960s. That
number doesn't change. And by the way, if you think this is an
especially American opinion, that is wrong. One-third of
Europeans, Australians, Japanese, and so forth believe that we
are being visited. I do not. I honestly do not. I don't think
that the evidence is very good. I think that if we were being
visited, it would not be controversial. It has been, what, 60-
some years since Roswell, for example. If you had asked the
residents of Massachusetts 60 years after Columbus do you think
you are being visited by Spaniards, that would not be
controversial.
Mr. Posey. Yeah.
Dr. Shostak. I think that if they were really here,
everyone would know that.
Mr. Posey. Okay. Very good. Stephen Hawking, I believe,
made some comments about contact with extraterrestrials or
other life. Your thoughts about his comments?
Mr. Werthimer. Yeah. So this is a controversial topic about
whether we should transmit messages. That is called active
SETI, or METI, messages to extraterrestrial intelligence. Most
people in the field think that we are just an emerging
civilization and the first experiments we should do is just
listening, trying to receive signals and see what is out there.
We think that advanced civilizations are going to be peaceful
if you watch Star Trek, but we don't know that and that may be
naive. So my feeling is that we should be just listening for
now and maybe in 1,000 or 10,000 years if we don't hear
anything, we should think about transmitting signals. But that
is a question for all humanity. It shouldn't be just up to a
few scientists. And so that is a big decision about who should
speak for Earth. So right now I think we should be listening
and that is--I believe that is what Hawking would say as well.
Dr. Shostak. I am going to disagree a little bit with my
colleague here, Dan. I think that there is very little danger
in transmitting, and if there is, we are already doing it. Yes,
we are 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 it will
take 450 years to get there and they may or may not like the
Beatles but, you know, they used a fairly powerful transmitter.
But the most powerful transmissions are coming off the
airports, right, for navigation, for the DEW Line, all these
things. These signals are on their way into space. They have
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 you are really
going to worry about this, you better shut down all the radars
at the local airports, and personally, I don't think that would
be a very good idea.
Mr. Posey. Okay. And briefly, still related, your thoughts
on thorium.
Mr. Werthimer. I am sorry. I am not familiar with the
topic.
Mr. Posey. Thorium--
Mr. Werthimer. Are you talking about nuclear--
Mr. Posey. Yes.
Mr. Werthimer. --reactors--
Mr. Posey. Yes.
Mr. Werthimer. --on thorium?
Mr. Posey. Yeah.
Mr. Werthimer. I am really not an expert. I am sorry.
Dr. Shostak. Only this, if you are talking about powering
spacecraft--
Mr. Posey. Yes.
Dr. Shostak. If you send spacecraft to some of the more
interesting parts of our solar system, they are in the
boondocks of the solar system, out Jupiter, Saturn, and so
forth. When you get to Saturn, the amount of sunlight has
dropped by a factor of 100 so you can't use solar cells very
effectively out there. You have to power the craft some way. I
wouldn't worry too much about radioactivity in space of course
because space has plenty of radioactivity. That is the nature
of the cosmos, right. But if you are worried about the fact
that these launches could go awry and that you would land these
things on Earth, yes, that is a danger, but of course people
are aware of that danger and they try and to mitigate.
Mr. Posey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank both the
witnesses.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Posey.
The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Schweikert, is recognized
for his questions.
Mr. Schweikert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to our
witnesses.
So, let's see, what have we learned so far? We have learned
there is a chance that aliens don't like the Beatles, which I
have trouble imagining, and they don't like our television
programming, and there was a couple other things, oh, yeah, and
Contact is the best movie, right? Somehow I thought that would
be funnier.
A couple mechanical questions I just want to sort of get my
head around some of the current scientific understanding. Let's
walk through a scenario and you tell me if it is plausible or
this is current thought. Asteroid hits the world, you know,
hits our Earth, and rock is thrown out into, you know, the
stellar, it carries DNA. Does that DNA survive? Doctor?
Dr. Shostak. Yes. This idea is known as panspermia, and I
am sure you are aware of that, 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, for example. You know, would the
DNA still be viable when it got someplace interesting? And the
results, as I understand them, suggest that yes, if you are
talking about, you know, communicable disease if you will
within the solar system, could a rock from Mars have ceded the
Earth, that is possible. There is no evidence that that
occurred but that is possible. The life would survive. It would
remain viable over the kind of timescales to send rocks in the
solar system from one world to another.
But if you are talking about seeding worlds in other solar
systems at the distances of the stars, the problem is space is
a pretty harsh environment even for a rock because there is a
lot of radiation and it is incredibly dry, so anything that is
in there is going to be suffering desiccation for maybe
hundreds of thousands, millions really--
Mr. Schweikert. Yeah.
Dr. Shostak. --of years before it gets there. And the
general consensus that I have heard is that it won't be viable
when it does.
Mr. Schweikert. Count on that because I think that is the
current sort of thought right now.
Mr. Werthimer. Yeah, so as you know, asteroids have hit the
Earth many times and so it will be a really interesting
question if life is found in our own solar system, like, for
instance, Europa, which is a moon going around Jupiter, has a
liquid ocean, there could be something swimming around down
there. By the way, when I--I talk to elementary schools and I
ask them how are we going to get through the ice and see if
there is something swimming around down there? The boys all say
we should use machine guns and bombs and the girls say we
should melt our way through using mirrors, a little different.
But anyway--
Mr. Schweikert. Once again proving there is something in
our DNA which is different.
Mr. Werthimer. So, if we do find life in our own solar
system, it would be really exciting to figure out is it exactly
the same kind of life? Does it use the same DNA, the same amino
acids, the same nucleotides? Is it identical chemistry? That
would mean that rocks are going back and forth between these
moons and planets in our own solar system, and it really
happened in one place and was carried back and forth, as Seth
was talking about.
That is not very interesting. What would be much more
interesting would be discovering life that is 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 there is a lot of
life out there.
Mr. Schweikert. Yeah. 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 a 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 of that and how
many can do higher math and sort of give you sort of a--and we
would use that as sort of a benchmark to try to do those
calculations. And I guess our understanding was it is
unknowable, you know----
Mr. Werthimer. Yeah.
Mr. Schweikert. --of what is out there, what isn't out
there. I mean, you know, we see the world of large numbers,
large planets, you know, these huge numbers.
Mr. Werthimer. Um-hum. On Earth intelligence has arisen
several times independently. There are a lot of intelligent
creatures, although none is quite as intelligent as us maybe.
We are not sure.
Mr. Schweikert. Well, we always used the higher math as
the----
Mr. Werthimer. Yeah. But I--my guess is that on some
planets there are going to be selective pressures that select
for different kinds of things. You can be successful in life if
you are 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 it is
advantageous to be smart.
Mr. Schweikert. But the--I guess and--for Dr.--the fun in
this one is how would you ever calculate it? Where--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----
Mr. Werthimer. Yeah.
Mr. Schweikert. --there is often quite a leap there.
Mr. Werthimer. I think it is very difficult to estimate
because we just have this one example on Earth. And so the--I
think the only way we are going to find out is to do this
search.
Dr. Shostak. It is very akin, I think, to sitting around in
the bars of Europe in 1700 trying to estimate the probability
that any expeditions sent into the deep south--any sailing
expedition will find the hypothesized southern continent there.
Mr. Schweikert. Yeah.
Dr. Shostak. You know, what is the probability? Can you
give me that to three figures before I fund to you? You can't.
You can't.
Mr. Schweikert. Yeah. So----
Dr. Shostak. You have to do the experiment.
Mr. Schweikert. So therefore it becomes a leap of faith but
it is----
Dr. Shostak. It is a reasonable leap of faith. It is a
reasonable hypothesis that there is life to be found out there,
even intelligent life to be found out there. And we can sit
around and have a lot of drinks and talk about it, but in the
end, if you don't do the experiment, you will just continue to
have the drinks.
Mr. Schweikert. Well, seeing some of our questions, there
may have been a lot of drinks going on.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Schweikert.
Dr. Shostak, Mr. Werthimer, 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 Committee's website, which
is Science.House.Gov, and we will clearly have some information
about this hearing on that website, 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.
[Whereupon, at 11:03 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Dr. Seth Shostak
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
Responses by Mr. Dan Werthimer
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]