>> >> "the copernicus complex" is the phrase that tries to capture of the species

asking nine scientifically whether or not we are. but "the copernicus complex" did the complex about we learned earlier not central or special in any way. is nothing special. >> that complex is the

instinct those are extremely down beaten. rationally we know that it doesn't. that is what copernicus' does. but rationally we can see in him with the rest of life on earth. at the same time we would like to think that we are special.

fating is part of it. that is the theme of the book what does it really mean?l8d >> the premise of the book is we are special or we are not special? so we are unique? >> that is actually the conclusion. as i set out to write the book in what has happened in the last couple of decades

if there is anything out there at all like this. but at the same time we have the evidence of the copernican is world view wages mediocrities. you did not know that 20 years ago. >> host: it started with copernicus finding we're not the center of the solar system. >> guest: what is the first person? the ada goes way back to the ancient greeks. but other greek philosophers did not like that idea.

how could that possibly be? because copernicus was reading at the time he also understood that history. they did not encounter him in a flash but with that information that was out there. but on the one hand it supports that world view. relativity tells us in the expanding universe with that ultimate extension that there will be feelings of planets that the chemistry

of life carbon chemistry is everywhere. so with that chemical potential for life that is special. >> guest: there is a host of the evidence that supports mediocrity. this is really a big piece and the other side to the equation at that plant but

that configuration of the solar system but we are a slightly unusual case. is not a frequently occurring type. >> host: that makes it unusual or special? >> but the nature of the planets them self. is what they observe in detail. looked at the gas planets like jupiter.

and they seem to be more elliptical for example. with that plan information to run amok. there are those types of planets that are out there richer very abundant that they are somewhat larger than the earth but not bin jupiter. there could be such things but we did not know for sure. we did not know about those worlds. what does that mean for life?

>> it shows that we are unique maybe we're in a special circumstance. >> guest: it is one piece of evidence to suggest we're not quite as mediocre to connect that to the presence ofn2i life is very difficult for us. we really don't know what is necessary to put into place. just to use as an example as a template. looked at the history of life on earth. and passed to line up.

with that planetary environment. with that history of biology >> is there the ingredient list? men life can no curb but is that something that is conjecture? >> guest: not really. because if we had the magic formula. in view of their own history then we argue nature is

[laughter] >> it is a dangerous place. [laughter] the part of the difficulty is these are all things that take on meanings after words part of the argument i make in the book as we could sit on another planet with the different history with 20 tentacles with scaly skin and we do the interview but yet if we had not had a six moons around our plan that we would not be here today? but the danger of that interpretation of things after the fact.

it is intriguing it is but it is extremely unlikely.d ñ that is one of the arguments >> you make the analogy of a line that bin to the stadium you have been to be the one to catch it. that seems improbable but if you would wind the clock back? is someone else's hands. >> write-in a crowded baseball stadium.

i think we would say that is incredible but looked at the events that led to that point to buy had not picked this dec tour shown at this time more this would not have happened. if you look around you and see 50,000 other people bin you realize it would land in someone's hand. someone will catch its. they have had the same conversation with themselves >> host: with the planets? >> guest: the difference with our situation is you don't know if anyone else is sitting there but you catch the ball. but then you have to wonder in my view one? if that were the case it

would be incredibly unlikely but a similar situation is the interpretation of history of life on earth to extrapolate that to say things whether or not we are very unusual. one of the themes of the book is that kind of arguments that has its flaws like the baseball analogy. it could be correct but it could be wrong. and the fact our solar system could be somewhat unusual. we do have the most common type of star is that relevant? we don't know.

>> host: one of the very interesting aspects of the book you spend a lot of times talking about microbesa and the dutch scientist to discovered for the first time there are a little creatures in hours alive and nobody had known before. important role in this story. tell us about that. >> guest: share. i begin in the book with the moment perhaps realizing there is an organism so small you cannot feed it

with the magnifying glass you really have to looked into in to find a cosmos and a drop of water rb in that situation? one of the things that made me want to to write the book is realizing some of these clues or ideas or the nature of life is done just come from the astronomers were the standing planets but from biology, a far deeper understanunderstan ding what life is. but that universe of the other life? what do we mean by life? there are radical arguments.5o

those that replicates and changes. but if you take life on earth with the single cell micro organisms? but that might grow cause some also has something to say about complex life, humans, with that status in a planetary system >> host: or that they are threatened by the fact that

microbial cells make up more. maybe not pound for pound. >> we carry around 10 times more microbe's manner own cell number. that is extraordinary. the field of microbiology is revolutionized how microbes are not just necessary for the function but they also play of role to make us who we are as individuals. so what i wanted to show in the book to take the microbiology as an interesting topic.hç

that is the context of all of life on earth. long before multi cellular life came along were before oxygen breathing life the same type of single cell organisms for their own benefit. with conscious intent to to interact with the planetary environment. to find out exactly when life began on earth. informed 5 billion years evidence there were living organisms but did not make the connection that we also are engineered

pieties organism they engineer everything else chemically, the masses come the chemistry of the ocean the yet to with life. >> host: one of the other interesting things 2.0 is microbes, by to bacteria, algae form say back up for dna. >> yes. i had not fully appreciated that if you look at the bacterial life that spread over every rock and crevice there is the fine -- a finite number of metabolic processes.

from that oxygen metabolism. or they generate or eat nothing. some just pre-the iron and manganese compound. that is how they survive. some of these tools of life on earth has converged on them. but the genetic information seems to be highly concerned. it is everywhere. that microbial organisms

it is the ultimate clout computing if you take a pitcher on the cellphone it is immediately uploaded but if you flush it down the toilet it does not matter. because it is already stored somewhere else. so with that microbial life life, sometimes after billions of years the issue being you could come along to destroy 99.9% of the life tomorrow. but pretend you could. the pods are extremely high they protect the genetic code from metabolism. life has learnt what we

lost. it tends to think this one mechanism that by which life on earth with these key foundations how you survive and informational way. to hold out for something more general. but that kind of mechanism than that is it to. then whatever they figure out it is that genetic

material passing from microbe to microbe. >> that is one way of life has managed to survive. after ice ages that could have like to that. >> right. and to suggest that far -- life is far more tenacious than we would have imagined. certain organisms are very good at surviving very difficult environments. but beyond that, once it gets goingto than preserve much more complex information and more detail. that is very tempting to say

that is the obvious engineering system just as life anywhere else it may employ the same type. perhaps it is just extra clues. >> host: if we're looking for life on other planets and we have been digitation. >> host: trees and stuff? >> guest: to be fair and there is no place close enough to realize that was not possible. looking back here when it

first occurred in the early space-age they came back to earth and it was disappointing to realize what has happened to the emphasis has shifted life was a messy. but looking at these chemical signatures that is what is happening on mars. >> host: water?

>> you consider it the environment that might harbor biochemistry. but liquid water is particularly important to rethink. it is biological frozen and spinachmfjá but is the good lesson not to audition. this change chemical imbalance but if you see it

it is the the physical plant of the non but but now to do perhaps maybe there is not so much on the floor but. >> and those that will quarter the schiller -- with those exit planets. that is the big focus.

but the planet the size of the earth. and what you can achieve. looking at the chemical balance you are bin to face but to havelg oxygen north things like that. >> a quick break then we will be back. >>.

in the book you talk about the potential to measure the probability that life exists elsewhere? . .

that really gives you evidence that there is life on the planet where the colors that you see on the surface of the planet are closely related to whether or not there's something growing their. there are a number of techniques that would give you probabilistic measurements. you would assign value to these characteristics into that sort of thing. >> when i say unconventional, we don't perhaps think of for a plan at a number of factors that

deal with the variations in climate during the annual cycles of the planet and so on. things that we measure for the years but we don't usually look at them in that respect. we don't bring it together and formulate a grading system if you will. so one of the interesting things about nothing for life, the focus has naturally been just on finding out whether or not there is anything else out there. but what is the next step? what is the ultimate place that you can go to with this? the reason that i discussed this in the book as it is related to something even deeper, and that is the question of why and how

is this universe suitable for life? it is suitable for life with one place here. but how suitable is that overall? the universe that we cannot deserve which is the universe for which life has troubled over 14 billion traveled over 14 billion years usually just called the observable universe is finite. it contained such few hundred billion galaxies and may contain a couple of hundred billion stars but if they finite number had another life might occur it means that the observable universe can take a very finite matters light and it might be just one instance that the chances are that it is something between one and a very much larger number. but why is it that number if it is just us, why? if it is one living planet per

24 systems why is it is that that number so one of the arguments i try to make in the book is that the total effect could be of that could be extremely important not just for evaluating some statistical numerical way of true significance but also off the deeper physics-based loops back to ideas that have been discussed in the past for example the anthropic principle that came up in the middle of the 20th century that started trying to understand the nature of the universe it wasn't quite clear at that the time the universe was finite and age are either it has always been here and in in the steady-state universe that's the same in time and space everywhere.

so it wasn't a big thing. we now think that obviously there was a big thing starting point for this universe. but a lot of the physicists began to see there are certain prophecies of the universe, this absolute strength of gratitude for the example and the absolute strength of electric magnetic forces. fundamental properties and the constants of nature that if you offered them a little bit could be very different so then you have to begin to ask it almost sounds a bit like a baseball public and but how likely is it for a universe to end up to all the great features that would lead to organisms like us and it can seem unlikely if this is the end of the universe that it is actually intimately related with the beginnings of what we call

the idea of the multi-verse that there might be not just one universe like this but in an honest number of other universes. there's no evidence of this right now. it fits with a number of ideas and theoretical physics and the interesting thing about it is that it deals with this question of why if there is only one universe and there has only been one universe, why was it suitable for life to emerge to make that observation? and equally, you can use the fact of our existence to perhaps understand something about the deeper physics of the universe. carbon comes from the stars to make things like carbon but if you tweak that there physics you

wouldn't make enough carbon to ensure that there would be a planet somewhere with lots of carbon compounds out of which life might emerge. so some people have argued there is a bit of bad choices because it made into the humanity could be any way you could make an argument that the very existence of life is telling you something about the deeper physics of the universe. you can figure out the physics and chemistry can give rise of the biology that we see and then vice versa. >> i think in the book i try to make the case that says this is very interesting and it's an inch reading idea but it's rather limited because it doesn't tell you how much life

there should be. you only need one instance of life to be able to make those sorts of arguments. we couldn't be here if the stars were turned away. great. but what is determining how much life is in the universe? perhaps that is a clue to something beyond what we thought about in physics at the moment lex that is one of the motivations for learning what the abundance of that the abundance of the frequency of life is in the universe. that universe. in the book i talk a little bit about how we might do that, and i might go off over the details of what would be an extraordinary technological achievement. >> does this have to do with the calculation of uncertainty? i thought that your discussion was fabulous in the book because

i'm no mathematician but i thought that you did a great job explaining that. >> guest: part of the book is the way in which we deal with probability and make inferences about the world around us based on limited information. >> host: because that is what we have is limited information. we rely very heavily on a set of a mathematical theorem that comes from the mathematicians back in the 18 hundreds and it is all about weighing of the evidence with fear he and asking not so much as my theory correct but how probable is it that my theory is correct correct to give him some observation that

i've made and in the book i use a little detail to give an inkling of how this works and it's going to turn into a rooster. attaches and sees this thing in the sky which is the sun and watch as it moved through the sky during the first day of the world. it thinks it isn't going to come back again. and because it is really intelligent, it formulates a theory and assess i think there is a chance it will reappear. wait and see what happens. the next morning the sun comes up again. >> host: another piece of data. >> guest: now this can update

the theory with new data that says i'm going to change the odds of it coming back again instead of being 50s /50 i'm going to say 75/25. so after a while after a month or so then the chicken has got to the into the plaintiff has the confidence it will reappear. it doesn't know for sure if it will reappear but it's 99% sure and then it can start annoying all the neighbors and this is the kind of approach to answering or asking scientific questions is essential to base the theorem and the interesting thing about it is you can ask the kind of questions that are

difficult for example and again i discussed this in the book we have a piece of evidence whether life is common or rare in the universe. the interesting thing is intuition if i'm walking down the street and they were owned into someone often times people will say we are here and it's a really big universe and now there are billions of planets everywhere and there has to be life somewhere else in the universe. it makes, right? well not really. if you apply this way of looking at things and updating your

theory it turns out you might have a theory that life on earth started pretty quickly 4 billion years ago. if you. a few billion years later he won't turn organisms capable of making an observation. doesn't that tell us something about how likely it is that life is to arise elsewhere. the disappointing answer is that actually it tells you almost nothing about the likelihood of life elsewhere. i used this to emphasize the point that right now if we could discover one single instance of life it would change everything. it would just be okay if it actually change the numbers. like a chicken updating its its probability for the sun to come up again. but in this case it would narrow

the option and give you a much stronger likelihood if you run the math properly integrate the formula, the probabilistic formula. >> would have our attempts attempts been this far together this much-needed data? there was a project or certain radio frequencies. how might we go about getting this information? >> i think there are several approaches and i've will get to the one that you are talking about. there is a a precious that we talked about already, the chemical signature approach.

that is a very sort of practical approach and in principle, the beauty of the approach is that you can begin to eliminate certain environments that's important and that will tell us something. there's another way there is another way to do this that you even get to. some people would consider the best example ever of a possibly artificial signal arriving in the 1970s and it was part of a project that was explicitly listening for extraterrestrial intelligence as a project known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence going on for a number of decades

now. originally it was listening for radio signals so you scan the skies just you can with different radio frequencies looking for signals that don't appear to be natural. in other words not signals coming from the stars or galaxies are anything were anything but that there is a structure to them. the effort is ongoing but it's the ultimate longshot. if you succeed, you would say wow. [laughter] as the years go by and you don't succeed it easier to say why are you doing this. i personally support the effort because it is one of those things that you don't know and

if nobody's listening, you never find out. that but may be extremely difficult to detect, but again if you don't try then you have absolutely no idea. there is a tension being paid to other forms for example there is the optical people have realized there are radio waves propagating through space and may not be the best way to either send signals across to other civilizations were to pick up random signals coming from civilization. they tend to get distorted by material that is out there between the stars in the galaxy whereas in the other part of the spectrum you can send signals there are much marco here and --

more coherent. there is an increased interest in looking for perhaps artificial signals that way and interesting ideas that are bubbling up now in the field to do with looking for some of the consequences of a technological civilization. >> host: here we are not going for bacteria, it is the real deal. >> guest: one idea is that the feeling and there are many assumptions we are extrapolating an enormous amount of our own nature and experience that the intelligent organisms build machines and they come up with ways to extract energy from the equivalent of gasoline or maybe the nuclear power or maybe it's

solar power and they use that engine. the consequence is that you warned the environment. for example if you turn on your computer it gets warm. that is just from all the things happening in the chip inside your computer. it turns out that if you run the numbers for a big enough civilization perhaps occurred and we are at the moment on a planet, we generate a significant infrared heat signature unintentionally even if it is efficient. it's very hard to get rid of this waste and energy. some people have been talking about what you build a telescope specifically designed to look for this infrared piece of the

planet that can't be explained. you have volcanoes and other things but the argument is that maybe a very specific heat signature of civilization. this is a long beach but the interesting thing about it is if we take the question really seriously it's actually the kind of thing we should be doing and should be thinking about. so, to come back to the earlier question is how are we going to evaluate your true significant it is going to be a technological achievement rather than a philosophical one. >> host: when you conclude the book with a subtle distinction between uniqueness and

significant, can you explain that sort of wine that you are walking at the end when you told the leaders what to want to think about all this? >> guest: i think i'm pretty honest in the book saying this is my personal take. i try to pull together what i think the answer is in part of what helps me get to the conclusion is that i talk about how it is on the edge between order and chaos as a thing that seems to emerge where there's a bit of energy but not too much into of certain chemicals but not too many. it's an emergent phenomenon that is the idea that a set of simple or interacting things can give a

rise to great complex at the. it's like watching a flock of birds. they seem to be flying around about when you see a swooping flock of birds it takes on a whole different structure in the emerging phenomenon. and i think that is the key piece of trying to pull these together. the conclusion i given the book is the way to reconcile these pieces of evidence that don't fit together is to say that maybe we are unique but not exceptional. in other words, life on earth including us may be unlike anywhere else in the universe. but there may be other places that are equally unique with a pathway through life of the 4 billion years there are twists

and turns. the idea that you would end up with anything like us or that creatures around us today again somewhere in the universe seems very unlikely. something that is equipped with might be identical. here we might not have enough information attempting to think that there is a planet full of occupied. they use tools tools, they use coconut shells. they are good survivors and evolutionary strap has paid off. but that may not be alien enough. they be there's something even stranger out there.

>> host: i have to ask you you live your life as a cosmologist constantly thinking it. so i wondered about that because people who suffer mental illness, the sort of anxious type they are always looking inward thinking about themselves and i wonder if there's sort of a mental note to value in having a broad view because the significance is important to us but sometimes we pay ourselves too much attention and not seeing that it's more than just us out of there thinking about solutions that may get some perspective. >> guest: i like to say that i'm a shiny subject of rational

but i'm not sure. [laughter] but i think for me personally, absolutely. this sense of perspective is important to me. on the occasions i think about it and i think this is true for any scientist as well, the sense of wonder and curiosity and insignificance all add up to this package that is kind of comforting in a strange way. i think it makes you feel that you are in this extraordinary situation. yes i'm utterly insignificant, but i'm sitting here thinking about it and there is something special about that so there is

an extraordinary juxtaposition. yet, here i am capable of acknowledging this. >> host: and maybe the problem is more insignificant. >> and the more your boss is insignificant and so on. [laughter] obviously it is hard to leave your life day to day when you have to pay the bills. >> host: you can't always be thinking about the universe. >> guest: to me it is a very soothing idea that all of this is merely a blipl. >> host: you've written an absolutely beautiful book. i was impressed by it, but answering these questions and the writing itself. >> guest: thank you very much. it's been a pleasure.

>> that was "after words," booktv signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policymakers and others familiar with their material. "after words" airs every weekend on book tv at 10 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9 p.m. on sunday and 12 a.m. on monday. you can also watch a "after words" online. go to booktv.org and click on "after "after words" in the book tv series and topics listed on the upper right side of the page. here's a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country.

valery sat down with booktv to talk about her books to the girls about the experiences of american-born second-generation japanese-americans. in the years around in world war ii. this 20 minute interview is part of booktv college series. >> valerie, when did japanese immigration to the united states begin and really take off? >> the first students in the 1890s and they were seeking

western technology and the idea of their knowledge in order to strengthen imperial rules put actually they were soon followed by a number of workers looking for economic opportunity. so the first went to hawaii but then more were coming to the continent of the united states. >> how big was the wave? >> guest: by the eve of world war ii there were 20,000 japanese americans, two thirds of whom were american-born in the continental united states and about 150,000 in hawaii. >> so again on the eve of world war ii 120,000 japanese-americans japanese americans inside the united states. >> who were in fact incarcerated and that there were several thousand in the east coast.

>> when one hears the term esay what is that quick >> it is literally first chapter of he beat generation that refers to the japanese. it refers to the u.s. citizen american-born children of the esay. >> ..