Extra: ET Code of Conduct
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Future Proof Extra. With Jonathan McRae. Proudly supported by Research Ireland. On Newstalk.
Now, imagine you're an astronomer, right? And we don't look down at a telescope so much anymore. But imagine you're an astronomer and you look at the data and in the data you see an undeniable pattern. Some irrefutable evidence of aliens. Who gets to announce to the world that intelligent life has been discovered beyond Earth? Or life at all? You? Your university? Or your company? The government? The United Nations? And why does that matter? Well, joining us now is Professor Michael Garrett. He's an astrophysicist at the University of Manchester and chair of the International Academy of Astronautics SETI committee. Welcome to the program, Michael. Remind us who SETI are, please.
Well, SETI is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It's an astronomy-based activity where we're looking at astronomical data for the sort of signature of other technologies, extraterrestrial technologies from other advanced technical civilizations.
And just to briefly kind of go through the, you know, when people hear that, they go, oh, you're looking for aliens. That sounds a bit mad. Just basically talk me through the thinking behind this, the science and the mathematics as quickly as possible, even though I know it's quite dense. But just, you know, the idea of looking for aliens sounds crazy, but actually it's based in pretty good maths. And the way you're looking about it is based in pretty intelligent science.
Well, yeah, I mean, we know over the last couple of decades that just about every star has some kind of planetary system. We never knew that until sort of the mid 1990s. So that means that there are something like 100 billion, maybe even more, planets in our own galaxy. And a good fraction of those will have been very similar to where the Earth was four billion years ago when life first started to arrive. So basically, you know, if it happened here, why shouldn't it happen elsewhere? It seems reasonable to think that it might.
Absolutely. And the way we go about looking for life is through myriad ways, but looking for patterns and signals from far away is an activity that SETI has been doing for quite some time. Talk to me about this new document, the ET Code of Contact. What is it?
Well, it's a document that has a long heritage, a long history, so this is not the first time it's been done. It's the first time it's been updated in 15 years, so the last incantation was in 2010 and before that there was one in 1989. It's really a kind of set of guidelines for, as you mentioned earlier, that astronomer, maybe without a background in SETI, who suddenly stumbles towards this fantastic discovery. And then begins to think about, well, you know, what next? They probably have a feel for the fact that this has interest that goes beyond the scientific community, that sort of the general public is very interested in this question of, you know, life elsewhere in our own galaxy and the universe.
So we hope that the document will be a sort of guideline for someone who maybe doesn't quite have the background that maybe SETI scientists have, so that they can do the right thing, make the right decisions, and sort of think a little bit about the impact that their discovery might have beyond the scientific community.
And this is, I suppose, more and more relevant as the ability to look to the skies and analyze publicly available data or their own data becomes increasingly much easier to do. Like, it's not difficult now to point something at the sky and use, you know, quite advanced technology to analyze what it is that we've seen. So it is possible that even though SETI and many astronomers are looking for life in the skies above us, that this might be found by an ordinary person. And this document, is for them.
What is SETI and why do astronomers really search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
So what is this? If I discover some pattern, some unusual signal or message coming from the stars, what should I do and why?
Well, the first thing is sort of verification. So I think that this isn't just like any other kind of astronomical discovery, which may be very interesting.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–4:27
2
What is SETI and why do astronomers really search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
4:27–11:09
3
How many planets could host life and what math supports searching for aliens?
11:09–16:44
4
What is the updated ET Code of Contact document and why was it revised?
16:44–18:06