are 80 billion stars in the milky way galaxy. than 1700 nearby planets have been found by the kepler space telescope. last month, astronomers discovered the first earthlike planet orbiting a star at a distance where liquid water could be present, a condition thought be central to life. the planet is only 10% larger than the earth and about 490 light-years away. xo planet survey satellite that will launch in 2017 and the james webb space telescope launch team in 2018 will help scientists discover more planets. 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. 2012, the95 and

number of papers published on astrobiology increased 10 times, and the #two pick report that cited astrobiology increased 25 times. astrobiology is a serious subject studied i 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 continues to be a matter of debate amongst scientists. around the world, 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. at the citye array institute of finance by microsoft cofounder paul allen

and the telescope in puerto rico are two well-known locations for conducting radio astronomy searches for life in the universe. astronomers have detected pulse signals that last only a few milliseconds. have fast radio bursts caused scientists to speculate as to their cause. some scientists have hypothesized 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 study optical telescope run by the harvard smithsonian center for astrophysics, the columbus article study observatory in california, 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 and 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? openingcludes my statement. the gentlewoman from texas, miss johnson, is recognized for hers. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman and good morning. in the interest of saving time, i forego making an opening statement insteadly simply want to welcome the doctors 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 we will determine whether we have researchers to continue this. so thank you. i yield back. >> thank you, miss johnson. i would like to introduce our

witnesses at this point. our first witness, dr. seth shostak, senior astronomer at the study institute in mountain view, california. he held his position since 2001. the doctor 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 of astronomy, technology, film and television and also edited and contributed to nearly a dozen scientific and popular astronomy books. he's authored four books including "sharing the universe: perspectives on extraterrestrial life" and "confessions of an alien hunter: a scientist's search for extraterrestrial intelligence." can you hear him each week as host of one-hour radio program entitled "big picture sinings." dr. shostak received bachelor of physics from princeton and ph.d. from the california institute of technology. our second witness, dr. dan

wertheimer, worked at the space sciences laboratory at uc-berkeley since 1983. he's currently the director of several of the lab's centers including the center for astrong mee signal processing and electronics research. additionally mr. wertheimer serves as chief scientist for the labs seci at home program and associate director of berkeley wireless research center. mr. wertheimer co-authored bio 20020 and editor of astronomy, molecules, microbes and extraterrestrial life and astronomical and biochemical origins and search for life in the universe. his research is featured in many broadcast stories such as abc and cbs and many major newspapers and magazines. his work has also reached a younger audience through scholastic weekly, a science magazine for kids. mr. wertheimer received his bachelor's and master's in physics and astrong mee from san

francisco state university. i will recognize to start us off today dr. shostak and then we will go to mr. wertheimer. >> thank you, congressman for the opportunity to be here. i will just give you a few big-picture thoughts on thoughts for search for life and in particular intelligent life that can uphold its side of the conversation as opposed microbial sort of life. this is obviously a subject of great interest to many people. let me back up and say when you read in the paper about discovery of new planet or something water on mars, you're looking at one of three horses in a race to be the first to find some extraterrestrial biological. the first horse is simply to find it nearby. that's where the big money is. rovers on mars, moons of the outer solar system. at least a half a dozen other world that's might have life in our solar system. chances of finding it i think are good. if that happens, it will happen in the next 20 years, depending on the financing. second horse in that race is to build very large instruments

that can sniff, if you will, the at moos fear of plan -- atmosphere around planets of other stars and find oxygen or methane, which as you know produced by cows and pigs and things like that but biological in any case. so you can 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, eavesdrop on signals that are deliberately or accidentally leaked off somebody else's world. that makes sense because in fact even we, only 100 years after mar conian and invention of radio, we have technology that would allow us to send bits of information across lightyears of distance to reputed extraterrestrials. let me tell you why i think

they're out there, by the way. it's unproven whether there's life on earth. that's the situation today. you heard me say twice now that i think that situation will change within everyone's lifetime in this room. and the reason is we're the universe is very infectant with habitats for life. congressman smith mentioned the number of stars in our galaxy. with respect that number is larger. it's something like 200 to 400 billion stars. but we now know at least 70% of them have planets. recent results from nasa's keppler telescope, astoundingly successful instrument, suggests one in five stars may have planets that are cousins of the earth. what that means is in our own galaxy, tens of billions of other planets that are the kind you might want to build condos on and live. tens of billions. if that is inadequate for your requirement, let me point out there are 150 billion other galaxies we can see with our telescopes, even with similar complement of earth-like world.

what that means is the numbers are so astounding if this is the only planet in which not only life but intelligent life arizin, we are extraordinarily exceptional. it's like buying electricals of lottery -- trillions of lottery tickets none a winner. that would be very unusual. although everyone likes to think they're special, and i'm sure you all are, maybe we're not that special. certainly history after strong mee shows every time we thought we were special we were wrong. what is done so far? various kinds of radio searches. i won't detail technology. we looked at parts of the -- much of the sky as fairly low sensitivity over a limited range of radio wavelength. 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 we haven't found anything means nothing. it's like looking for mega phone in africa and giving up after you only examined one city block.

and the reason the search has been so cramped, so contradicted so far is simply, to be honest, the fact there's no funding for this. it's all privately funded. total number of people in the world that do seti for a living is fewer than number of people in any row in the audience here behind me. that's the world total for this endeavor. when are we going to find them? you heard me suggest that may happen rather quickly. let me point twout other things, one, this is very interesting to the public because they have seen extraterrestrials on television and in the movie all the lives. that also give it's a giggle factor. very easy make fun of it. very easy make fun of ferdinand magellan's idea to sail around the earth or captain cook, exploration, that's what this is. consequences are always -- shall we say celebratory, there's life, intelligent life that calibrate our position in the universe. as congressman smith said probably be greatest discovery

humankind could ever make and what's important is this is the first generation that has both the knowledge and technology to do that. >> thank you for the opportunity to talk about this question. can you guys show the slides? i want to walk you through some of the seti experiments we and other people are doing. as seth mentioned this nasa keppler mission from that we learned there are a trillion planets in our milky way galaxy, lots of places for life and we learned a lot of these planets are what we call goldilocks planets, right distance where it's not too hot or cold. rocky planets, liquid water. there could be life out there. how are we getting in touch? one of the ideas is earthings are sending off radio,

television signals in space. the early shows like "i love lucy" 10,000 stars. nearby stars have seen "the simpsons." turn that around and if we're broadcasting maybe other civilizations are sending signals in our direction even leaking signals the way we unintentionally send signals or maybe deliberate signal. they could be sending laser signals and there are a number of projects looking for laser signals. this is a project at harvard university of very clever project. this is a project at lick observatory. also a project at the -- in hawaii looking for laser signals. people are also looking for radio signals. our group uses the world's largest radio antenna, we call it radio telescope. this is in puerto rico and it's 1,000 feet in diameter. it holds 10 billion bowls of corn flakes. we haven't actually tried that. [laughter] it's operated by national science foundation and moan astronomers would be lucky to

use thiselescope a day or two a year. we figured out a way to use the telescope at the same time other scientists are using it deloket data all year around and we're checking data all year around as i talk to you. that is a problem. even though we get the world's largest telescope all year around it creates enormous amount of data. to analyze that data we asked volunteers for help. you can help us by running a program on your home computer or laptop or desktop computer. you install a program called seti at home. screensaver program. the way we take the data from the world's largest telescope and break it up into little pieces, everybody gets a different piece of the sky to analyze and install this program and it pops up when you go out for a cup of coffee and computer go through data looking for all of the different frequencies and data types. this is what it looks like when it's running on your computer at home. it takes a few days to analyze data looking for interesting

signals. when finds interesting signals, sends them back to berkeley and then a new chunk of data, part of the sky to work on f you're the lucky one that finds that faint murmur from distant civilization, you might get the nobel prize but there's a catch. nobel prize, you have to maybe share with a lot of people. there are millions of people who downloaded the seti at home screensaver. split over 200 countries. together volunteers have formed one of the most powerful uper computers on the planet enabled most sensitive search for extraterrestrial signals anybody's done so we're grateful for the volunteers. now we made that more general so you can participate in not just seti with your home computer but you can participate in a lot of projects. climate prediction projects, gravity weight project, protein folding, look for malaria drugs, h.i.v. drugs, cancer drugs and allocate how you want your spare computing cycles to be used on your home computers. one of the new projects we're

working on is pan chromatic seti and we're asking observatories around the world to look at a lot of different wavelength bands, a lot of different frequencies, targeting the var nearest stars and trying to cover all of the different bands that come through the earth's atmosphere. radio frequencies and infrared frequencies and wavelengths and also obstacle frequencies, laser signals and this will be extremely comprehensive search because we've got eight different telescopes we're using. and looking at all of these different bands but only targeting nearby stars. another project we're just launching this year is called interplanetary eavesdropping. the idea of this project is 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 went will have radio communication or laser communication on our two planets. put it the other way, distant civilization may have colonized

a planet and there may be radio signals going back and forth between those two planets. now with the keppler spacecraft, we know exactly planets in 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 back and forth between two distant planets. we are using green bang telescope in west vath to do that experiment. while swept found e.t.'s so far but we made a lot of interesting discoveries. discovered a planet made out of solid diamond. first maps of the black hole center of galaxy. they are used in all kinds of things, brain research that could eventually control prosthetic arms. we're just getting in the game. we only had radio 100 years. it's like alooking for a needle in a haystack but i'm optimistic in the long run. the reason i'm optimistic in the long run is seti is limited by competing technology, which is

growing exponentially, limited by telescope technology. china's building a huge telescope bigger than arasibo and australians and south african and europeans working on a huge telescope made out of thousands of dishes combined to make a giant telescope. i think i will stop there. i have a couple potentialsky read you from the volunteers but i'm out of time. thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. wertheimer. thank you both for your excellent testimony and actually you have anticipated my questions a little bit but would i still like to go forth with them and let me address the first question to both of you. starting with dr. shostak and it is this, a two-part question -- what do you think -- 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. second question would be what do you think is the likelihood of finding either microbial life or

intelligent life in the universe. two different kinds of questions. dr. shostak? >> well, the probability of life, of course, it's hard to estimate because what we do know now and something we didn't know evently even 10, 20 years ago we did not know were there habitat that's could support life? what amon industry has proven in the last -- astronomy has proven they're made out of the same stuff, distant galaxies same 92 elements on the wall in your ninth grade classroom. so this means if you have taken chemistry in school, you don't have to take it again if you move to another galaxy. it's all the same everywhere. we know building blocks are there. we know there will be plenty of planets where you have liquid water and atmosphere, the conditions you have in hyattsville, for example. so life could arrive on any of these places we also know life began on earth very very, quickly. it's only a sample of one so not entirely convincing but it does suggest it wasn't very difficult for life to get a foothold on

this planet so maybe elsewhere. so life i think is maybe not so hard to get started. that's sort of the general impression among scientists. what they believe is not so important is finding it's important. second part, what about intelligent life? that's a lot harder, right. the earth has had life we know for at least 3 1/2 billion, probably 4 billion years, almost since the beginning. this place has been carpeted with life. and almost all of that time required microscope to see it. it was all microbial. only in the last 500 million years did multicellular life, you know the whole story. that opens up the question, well, if i give you a million worlds with life, what fraction will ever cook up something as clever as you all? 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're not the only species that's gotten clever in the past 50 million years. if you have dogs and cats at

home, they're cleverer than dinosaurs. intelligence does pay off 0. >> thank you, doctor. you mad a point i might emphasize and that is what 20 years ago we had not detected a single planet outside our solar system and now we're up to lose to 2,000 so exponential growth in astrobiological research. mr. werth himer? >> i suspect the universe is teaming with microbial life. it would be bizarre if we're alone. but i don't know that for sure. the intelligence is going to be rarer but because there are a trillion planets, i believe it will happen often. it's happened several times on this planet and it's likely to arise elsewhere. >> as you would put it at 100% then? >> 99. >> 99.999, strung on out 0. ok, good. next question, mr. wertheimer, let me follow up with you, and by the way as far as seti at home screensaver goes, that would be something here for 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'm not sure which. let me ask you, what is the advantages and disadvantages of radio seti versus optical seti? >> there are a lot of pros and cons. lasers are good for point-to-point communication and lots of bits pr second, lots of data. i think the best strategy is multiple strategy. we should be looking for all kinds of different signals and not put all of our money in one basket. it's hard to predict what other civilizations are doing. if you asked me 100 years ago what to look for, would i have said smoke signals. so we try to launch a new seti project and new idea every year. >> dr. shostak, anything to add to the advantages or disadvantage of radio versus optical seti? >> i should point out they're both sort of different colors of the same thing. in fact literally different colors. they're both electromagnetic means of communication and we use both in our telecommunications here on

earth. i suspect aliens will as well. just about every week i get an e-mail from somebody who says you guise are looking for radio signals, that's so old school. extraterrestrials, assume ig they're out there, will use something more sophisticated. i'm not sure what that is. that depends on physics we don't know. one shouldn't discount a technology simply because it's been around a while. we use the wheel every day. that's a pretty old technology. i suspect we will continue to use the wheel for a long time. >> thank you both for your answer to my questions. ranking member, miss johnson, is recognized for her questions. >> thank you very much. i'm trying very hard to ask something that sounds sensible. so what is the status of the extraterrestrial intelligence and research now? >> i think we're just getting in the game. we're learning how to do this and i think we would be lucky to find, even though i'm optimistic about life and intelligent life

in the universe and it's likely there's a whole galactic internet out there, i think we would be lucky to find them now but i'm optimistic in the long run. >> congressman johnson, moipt out con ight point trar to popular impression, this experiment isn't the same from day to day. people think you're sitting around with earphones listening for commozzic status. anding of course, it's not. a lot of listening is done by computers. but at this point much of the experiment depends on digital technology computers, if you will. and there's something called more's law, whatever you can buy today for a dollar you can buy twice as much for a dollar two years from now. it's very rapid growth in the capabilities there. so in fact the search is speeding up and it's actually speeding up exponentially. a very heavily overused word, exponentially but in fact it applies. >> tell me this, i know that the

or -- ment of technology are important and some of the old technologies and techniques are also still in play. how do you predict your advancement based on what you have available to you for research tools? >> i will just say something i'm sure dan has torch add to this. in terms of what we can do in the near future, foreseeable future, what you really i think need to do if you want to have a decent chance of success, and remind you this has to remain speculative. this is like asking christopher columbus two weeks out, have you found any new continents lately? and his answer, there was only water around the ship and yesterday water around the ship and tomorrow it will be acquiesce in the vicinity of the ship, but -- so he can't predict when anything interesting is

going to happen, nor can we. but if you look at what you are call euphemistically estimates, guesses, to what fraction of stars have somebody you might be able to pick up t. 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 done that today. we have done less than 1% of that as of today. 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 iven the funding to do it. >> yes. >> captured it well. now, when we find the other life on on planets, what do you speculate we will find and what is the potential value? >> i think it's profound either way. this is not an expensive thing.

in order of a million dollars a year we are funded by national science foundation, nasa, templeton foundation, some private donations. the reason i think it's profound either way. if we discover we are alone, we better take really good care of life on this planet. it's very precious. and the other thing that's profound too if we find we're part of a galactic community and get on the galactic internet and learn all of their poetry, music, literature, science, we can learn a lot. >> and i will just add briefly, nobody know what's we will learn. if we can decode this signal, this is like hire owe gliffics, you might be able to figure them out. turns out hieroglyphics were written by humans so it made it easier and rosetta stone and whatever. so we may not every figure it out. if you could, you will be listening to data being sent by societies that far in advance of us because we're hearing them, not the other way around. so there are they are more advanced and may they teach you

important stuff. imagine the incas find a barrel washed up on the shore maybe from europe filled with books. if they could ever figure out the books, they would learn a lot of interesting stuff. i don't know 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, intellectual university. i think that's maybe good for our souls to know how we fit in. >> thank you very much. my time has expired. >> thank you, miss johnson. jat from ohio, mr. johnson, is recognized for his question. >> thank you, mr. chairman. gentlemen, for both of you, how has the recent discovery of over 1,700 planets by the keppler space telescope, how has that impacted seti research? >> if you asked astronomers 20 years ago are there planets

growing on other stars, we would say we think so but we don't know. that all changed now and a lot is due to the nasa keppler mission. if you extrapolate on the planets, which are a few thousand planets they discovered, extrapolate on that, there are a trillion planets in the milky way galaxy, three or four time planets than there are stars. a lot of places for life. >> i think it's also affected the experiments in the sense that in the past with we point the telescopes in the direction of certain kinds of stars, certain masses of stars, brightness of stars. those stars were the ones we thought these might have earth-like planet but we didn't know. we now know two things, one as stan mentioned, majority have planets. can you look at a random star and feel confident it has a planet. more than we are getting some information from keppler what fraction have planets that are sort of like the earth. that fraction is not 1 in a million or 1 in 1,000 or not 1 in 100. it may be 1 in 5.

so you look at 50 star systems and you get 10 earth-like planets. in some sense it made the search much more straightforward. we look at all of the nearby stars we can. >> ok. dr. shostak, would you please provide some examples of the technical contributions seti has made to astrong mee and other fields? for example, how as seti research benefited other areas of science? benefit lessat its so in terms of discovery. we haven't found e.t. if we had, we wouldn't be having this hearing. to my surprise i will say seti has not turned up astro physical fanom no that were unexpected as well. that's surprising. normally the history, precedent in astronomy is every time you build an instrument that exams a different, if you will, parameter in the phase-space of the universe you find something new. so that's instructive that it hasn't. 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. the rovers on mars, yes, they're there to find hydrology, history of water on mars but why are you interested in the history of the water on mars? you're interested because want to know were there martians, mibecrobial most likely. are there still martians? that's what interests people the most. and seti was also, if you will, a punch line to this story that nasa had about finding, you know, traces of water on mars or burrowing through the ice on ue ropia and sell it as some of the moons in the outer solar system where there may be vast quantities of liquid water. seti said ok, we may find life but what about intelligent life? that would be more interesting and that's what missing in fact from the nasa program today.

>> ok. you made a comment just a few minutes ago that kind of caught my attention. let me make sure i got it right. from id that if we hear intelligent life out there somewhere that they must be more advanced than us because we're hearing from them and not the other way around. how can you draw that conclusion ? maybe they had been hearing from us for a long time and just don't like what we have to say. [laughter] >> i think it's entirely possible that we're on -- in their catalog. they have seen oxygen in our atmosphere and they know we're out here. i think that life in the universe is going to be a lot of different stages. some of it will be microbial. some trees, more sophisticated. the earth is 5 billion years ofmente some stars 10 billion years old. there could be a lot of advanced civilizations as well. just point out, you're not going to hear from any less advanced

society because they're not building radio transmitters. >> for sure. i would say at least equal to, perhaps more advanced. but maybe they got their caller i.d. block turned on or something. >> it could be. i wouldn't speculate on alien sociology and whether they like our television or not. i don't know about that. but chances if they are at least at our level that they're within 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 years of our level is simply on statistical grounds highly uncertain. if you hear from somebody -- >> one final quick question for both of you, how would you define successful seti research? i mean, i know that's kind of a nebulous question but -- how would you define successful? >> if you found a signal and that could be corroborated. if you just find it once and can't find it again, it's not science. so if you find a signal that's moving across the sky the way the stars do because of the rotation of the earth, it's narrow band signal. not made by nature. it's made by transmater.

that's success. >> all right. >> i think the most likely scenario is finding some sort of artifact of technology or radar signal or navigational beacon or something that the gentleman from oregon is recognized. if the gentleman we just yield to me for 10 seconds. the likelihood is that if there were other intelligent civilizations, there would likely be more advanced than we are. we are a relatively junior galaxy. be 2 billion years older than we are. it is fascinating to think what form of life might be existent in a universe or parallel universe or another galaxy where they have had a 2 billion year head start. not even recognize them as scented beatings. i just am fascinated by the

subject. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for being here. , mr. wertheimer, that can't think of a time and we have had a larger percentage of experts on our panel. thank you both so much for being here. by your am intrigued testimony on the public's interest, and how the idea of life in space is an idea that everyone grasps. it is an ideal hook for interesting young people in science. one of the statements that resonated with me is that it would be a cramped mind indeed if there'snot wonder anyone out there. you said that extraterrestrials are the unknown tribe over the

hill. in any case, someone we would like to know more about. i recollect a similar hearing last year when one of my said, the interesting question is, what do we do when we find life on another planet? you, aboutk, both of what the plan is? to we announced to the world? at dewey research more to determine if these are friendly or collaborative? what do you do when we make the discovery, assuming it is going to happen? that is a question of great interest to the public and great importance. again, there is no danger. you tune in your favorite dj anya car radio and there's no chance he going to jump in your

car. if we pick up the signal, they don't know that. whether the question of we should reply. what happens? 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. there is no plan. and ie had false alarms have waited for my congressmen to call me up and say you guys are picking up a signal, what about that? nobody showed the slightest bit of interest, to be honest. the media started calling up, but the government is not so interested. what happened is that it would immediately be known that we had found a signal. it would be known even before it had been corroborated. there would be false alarms. you get somebody in another observatory to observe it. there are too many things that could go wrong.

>> do you have anything to add to that? >> i think before you make a big announcement you want to make sure it is real. you ask a different telescope with different people and software and equipment to verify it. and you can triangulate and make sure it is coming from something outside. you make sure it is not a graduate student playing a prank. once you have confidence that you have found something, you may have some new astrophysical phenomenon. when pulsars were discovered they thought they had found little green men. the point you are sure you have found something, you make all the information public. the coordinates in the sky, the frequency, anything you know about the signal. a lot of people will be working on that problem. 24 ceti scientists on the planet, to what extent are other nations involved?

can you talk about where we are as a nation compared with the other countries in the world? i is quite fragile. there are about two thirds of them in the u.s.. lot of the original ideas have come out of the u.s.. we are working with other scientists in other countries. we're trying to get able from other countries and other groups , because it is only a small number of institutions. the funding is fragile. it is fluctuating. the biggest telescopes on the planet are currently funded by the national science foundation, -- one may virginia have to be shut down and the others hanging by a thread. the chinese are building a bigger telescope. a new one will be built in south

africa and australia. the u.s. may not continue to lead this work. >> i would find that disappointing if that happened. i yield back the balance of my time. >> mr. collins is recognized for his questions. >> 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? >> i think i have been on it, actually. [laughter] once.han the public is fascinated with the idea that we may have been visited in the past or may yet be visited. i personally don't share the conviction that we are being visited. i don't think that would be something that all the governments of the world have managed to obfuscate or keep secret. i don't believe that. 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 the ancient egyptians was yesterday. then? why were they there what was it that brought them to earth? i have no idea and i don't find good evidence. the pyramids were built by egyptians. i know that is a radical idea for some people, but they were very clever and could certainly do that. i don't think there's any good evidence that convinces me that we were visited in historic times. >> how about you, mr. wertheimer? evidence that any of these sightings -- i think some of these sightings are real phenomenon. we got calls from the space taste goes over. some people embellish and say it has windows. some of these people's imagination, and we know that because it ties very closely to popular culture.

when jules vern wrote about flying saucers, everybody started seeing them. before that, people saw angels. get people watch movies, we a lot of reports that are tied to what is in the movies. some of it is actually deliberate hoaxes from people making money. i think that was my only question, mr. chairman. i yield back. marylandntlewoman from is recognized. >> i think i should have been earlier. so i apologize. i enjoyed to thus far. contact,te movie is right? every year it comes out, since 1997. i watch it. i dream, i think well, who knows? intriguing thing about this conversation is the idea that, and it is a little bit of hubris, right? we are waiting to find them

instead of them waiting to find us. maybe that is just the nature of homo sapiens. that is what we do. .'m a little bit curious dr. wertheimer, you discuss the city project which will use six telescopes to search nearby stars and stars most likely to host a planet system similar to the sun's. the project you describe would examine a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum spanning from low frequencies of optical light to detect possible signals from advanced civilization. thatre the target stars you talked about identified, and how are you going to coordinate the use of the six telescopes? >> we're not trying to use the telescopes all at the same time. that is hard to do. we use a telescope and other groups we are working with at

other universities. we are targeting, instead of targeting stars that we know have planets, it looks like all stars have planets. we will target the nearest stars. that is our plan, target the nearby stars. >> you talked also about this of youthat there are 24 folks who are most interested academically. aren't there -- isn't there a whole network of people out in communities who feed or fuel some of the research that you are doing? to take that one? >> 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, sure, there are a forthousand people looking it, but without the instruments

it is very hard to do that. us are stillt of really dreaming and pretending? i want to talk about security issues and the time that we have left. i understand that early on there was an assessment of the softwares of the ceti to withstand malicious attack and penetration. in the earlier study, you found that there have been two noteworthy attacks and the web server was compromised. we also found later that exploding a design flaw in your server protocol, that hackers had stolen thousands of user e-mail addresses. can you give us an idea of the current state of security? i think in general, downloading software and installing it on your computer, you should be careful.

we are one of the safest things to install on your computer. it has been running for a really long time. it is open source software. of the volunteers help us write the software. we are now recording it to cell phone so you can run it on a cell phone. >> i guess some of the questions deal with open source. >> i think open source software is a little safer because so many eyeballs can look at it. done. ok, i'm i will go back to watching my movies. >> thank you, ms. edwards. mr. posey is recognized for his questions. for inviting these distinguished witnesses for this

fascinating testimony. very enjoyable. the ceti facebook page every day to get my little factoid. i learned something there every day. educational and very inspiring. obviously, very interesting. the graphics are always good, too. on your disclosure, i was really impressed with the number of agreements and grants. i am glad to know that nasa is so engaged with what you are re and stillan allow you a free hand to do what you do. thank you for that. obviously, there's some

curiosity about your thoughts about such things as project bluebook. what do you think? >> first off, i want to thank you for noting. those grants are for astrobiology research at the institute. there's no federal money going into the search for intelligent life. the majority of our scientists are doing astrobiology, so life on mars and the outer solar system. it is a very productive line of research as well. in terms of project bluebook and phenomenon, i am quite skeptical. one third of americans believe that we are being visited. that is the result of polls that are been taken since the 1960's. that number does not change. if you think this is an especially american opinion, this is wrong. i honestly don't think the evidence is very good. i think if we were being visited

it would not be controversial. e years since0-som roswell. i think if they were really here, everyone would know that. >> very good. stephen hawking made some comments about contact with extraterrestrials or other life. your thoughts about his comments. this is a controversial topic about whether we should transmit messages, that is called active messages to extraterrestrial intelligence. most people in the field think that we are an emerging civilization and the first experiment 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

out there, but we don't know that. my feeling is that we should be just listening for now. maybe in a thousand or 10,000 years, if we don't hear anything, we should think about transmitting signals. that is a question for all humanity. it shouldn't be up to just a few scientists. that is a big decision, about who should speak for earth. right now i think we should be listening. i believe that is what hawking would say, as well. >> i'm going to disagree a little bit with my colleague. i think there's very little danger in transmitting. if there is, we are already doing it. yes, we are not deliberately targeting stars in general, although we have done that in the past. 2008sent a beatles song in to the north star. that would take 450 years to get there and they may or may not like the beatles. they used a fairly powerful transmitter. the most powerful transmitters are coming off the airports for navigation and the dew line.

these things are on their way into space. their party reached several thousand star systems. any society that has the technical competence to threaten you across dozens, hundreds of thousands of light-years of space can pick up these signals. if you're going to worry about this you better shut down all the radars of the local airports. personally, i don't think that would be a very good idea. >> your thoughts on thorium. >> i'm not familiar with the topic. >> if you're talking about powering spacecraft this way, if you send spacecraft to some of the more interesting parts of our solar system, they are in the boondocks, out to jupiter and saturn. when you get to saturn, the amount of sunlight has dropped by a factor of 100.

you can't use solar cells were effectively. you have to power the craft some way. i wouldn't worry too much about radioactivity in space because space is plenty of radioactivity. it is the nature of the cosmos. if you're worried about the fact that these launches could go ony and land these things earth, that is a danger. people are aware of the danger and they try to mitigate it. to our witnesses, what have we learned so far? we have learned that there is a chance that aliens don't like the beatles, which i have trouble imagining. they don't like our television programming. oh yeah, and contact is the best movie, right? somehow i thought that would be funnier. a couple of mechanical questions i want to get my head around.

let's walk through a scenario and you tell me if it is plausible or if this is current thought. an asteroid hits the world and into thehrown out stars. it carries dna. does that dna survive? >> this idea known as panspermia , the idea that one world can infect another world, people have simulated the environment of space and put some of our earthly bacteria into iraq and put it in space to see how long he could survive. viablee dna still be when it got someplace interesting? the result, as i understand, suggest that yes, if you're talking about communicable system,within the solar the rock from mars have seeded

the earth, that is possible. there's no evidence that that occurred, but it is possible. if you're talking about seeding worlds in other solar systems, the problem is that space is a pretty harsh environment, even for a rock. there's a lot of radiation and it is incredibly dry. anything that is in there will be suffering desiccation for maybe hundreds of thousands and millions of years before it gets there. the general consensus that i have heard is that it won't be viable when it does. >> i think that is the current thought right now. as you know, asteroids have had tears many times. it will be a really interesting question if life is found in our own solar system, like for instance on europa which has a liquid ocean. it could be something swimming around down there. way, i talked to

elementary schools and asked them how we will get through the eyes and see if there's something 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. >> once again, proving there is something in our dna that is different. ouro if we do find life in own solar system, it would be really exciting to figure out if it is exactly the same kind of life with the same dna and amino nucleotides.me is it identical chemistry? that would mean that rocks are going back and forth between these moons and planets in our own solar system. it really happened in one place and was carried back and forth. interesting.ery what would be much more interesting would be discovering life that is different, with a different chemistry. if we do find something like that on europa or on another

moon, or mars, that means that the universe is teeming with life. if we can find two different kinds of life and her solar system, that means there is a lot of life out there. >> it makes one wonder. the chairman was trying to ask for percentage of life out there in existence. i remember doing this as a thought process with one of my professors many years ago. i guess one of the mechanisms from the beginning to today, earth has had 100 billion species and how many can do higher math? it gives you a -- we would use it as a benchmark to try to do those calculations. i guess our understanding was is unknowable. we see the world of large

numbers, large planets, these huge numbers. >> intelligence has arisen several times independently. we always use a higher math as an example. >> my guess is that on some planets, there will be selective pressures that select for different things. you could be successful in life if you are strong or fast, but you can also be successful in some evolutionary environments by being smart. i think there are going to be places in the universe where it is advantageous to be smart. the fun of this one is, how would you ever calculated? how would you build a baseline to build from? when you move from hope, which is a powerful thing, to put it into a calculator is quite a leap. >> is very difficult to estimate.

we have this one example on earth. i think the only way we will find out is to do this search. is very akin to sitting around in the bars of europe in 1700 trying to estimate the probability that an expedition sent to the deep south would find a southern continent there. what is the probability? can you give me three figures before i find you? you can't. >> is a reasonable leap of faith. it is a reasonable hypothesis, that there's life to be found there, even intelligent life, 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 continue to have the drinks. >> or may have been a lot of drinks going on. >> thank you, both, for a testimony.

i also want to thank the high school students for being here today. you have a wonderful opportunity 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. in case someone has an interest or wants to follow up on the subject, you might go to our committee's website, which is .house.gov. thank you for wonderful hearing today and we stand adjourned. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014]

a her once he's in, a look at the exploration of mars and the prospect for a manned mission to the red planet. we will hear from one of the engineers who built the nasasity rover and administrator charles bolden. that is at 4:00 p.m. eastern. astronaut steven swanson is commander of the international space station in orbit 260 miles above the earth. we talked to him about nasa and the space station in a 15-minute interview. c-span.nder, welcome to

tell us a little bit about the current activities of the international space station. of generally, what are you doing? >> we have six crew members appear right now, three russians, two americans, and one german. mostly we deal with science up here. also we have to maintain the station and keep it running smoothly and efficiently. with the experience -- express your conducting, what categories to the following to and why does need to be conducted in an atmosphere such as your? rs? >> we are looking for dark energy and dark matter.

it is something we're try to figure out, just the basic physics of how our universe came to be. from that we go all the way to human research, other bodies. how do we change in the microgravity environment? specifically, our eyes and muscles and bones. we have applications for people on earth with diseases. we can see it at a more rapid pace appear. thingsa here is that change enough that people can pieces orw different objectives change in this microgravity environment. it is different than on earth and it gives another data set to look at and compare to. that gives them a lot more understanding of the problem. because you're up there microgravity, talk about the extent of the science. are we talking basic research or

advanced research? it is both. looking forearch is dark energy. the advanced research we do in combustion and cancer research, we're looking at t cells. we're looking at science research and trying to understand certain basic physics properties and other things. there is so much science going on, it is just amazing. are: how my experiments national -- are nasa sanctioned and taxpayer-funded? i don't really know the are differenthere sources. we have from nasa and european space agencies and the japanese space agency and some from the russians. we have a whole group which takes in science experiments

from all over the u.s. and combines them into a group from that area. it a whole bunch of different places where our experience come from. i don't know any exact numbers. host: you spoke about life and microgravity. can you give folks an example of what it is like being there and atmosphere without gravity? can you move around to give folks a sense of what it is like? is a good thing. anything you hold just floats on a list go of it. that is good and bad. don'td thing is, if i watch this, it will float off and it would take me another hour to find it. that is the negative thing. moving around is very much fun. i will give you an example of some things you can do.

i am not a gymnast on earth, so this is the only place i can do that. host: do you hit your head and things like that? definitely at the beginning it is more difficult. we have little competition is now. you have to get the rotation without any side movement. you can see how many rotations you do before you hit something. it is a little competition we do up here. how large is the station? what are we talking size wise? it is about the volume of a 747, really. it is quite big, about 250 feet long. at certain spots it is maybe 100 or defeat or 140 feet wide. big volume wise.

it is not like we're crowded up here at all. what is a working relationship like between the countries represented up their? re? guest: is a very good working relationship. we have trained beforehand as a crew so we got to know each other very well. we still work together on a daily basis. we have no issues. yes, there are always cultural erences. we are all good friends appear. it seems to go quite smoothly. host: here on earth there are current issues and turning tensions between united states and russia. you have three russian cosmonauts onboard. to those issues get discussed on board and do you get any discussions about what is going on on earth? yes, they do get

discussed, just like any news event very we all discuss it. it is not like there is any negative to it, though. we understand it is politics going on. we also understand it does not affect our work and our relationship with each other. we are all friends. it does not affect us, but it is discussed. host: what is the nature of the discussions like? that is a good question. it varies on the topic. relations, wessia delve more into the politics of the country and more of details about the cultures and what that means in each country. andbreak it down that way you can see what is going on a little more clearly. on the science side, if russia decided at one point because of relations they wanted to pull back on work on the space-based and, how is the

united states affected by that? how is the science experiment affected by that? right now, the science is , including separated the european space agency, canada and the russian side. science is somewhat separated. russians toe the get up here and get down. that tow, we need happen. that is probably the biggest deal right there. if we can't get up here, we can't do the science. commander, you can move around if you want and take the mic with you. as manning and staffing the station, as much depends on commercial spacecraft. what is the experience with these commercial spacecraft staffing and supplying the

station? right now they are just supplying the station. we are very happy that we have american cargo vehicles coming up. it is a great advancement. these are good vehicles. it does offload our dependence on russia and other countries for that. we are happening about that -- we are happy about that and looking forward to the next development will we do get new crew on an american vehicle. that will change our dynamic quite a bit. for right now, it is just the cargo coming up. hopefully, we will have one come up in less than a month and give us new food and new science to work on. as far as the next step, what is that and how do things change? actuallye next step is proving out that the vehicle is

safe for humans, which we have a few companies bidding for that opportunity right now. once they start in their project, the end of the project hopefully,of 2017, we will have a manned test of an american vehicle at that time. they will probably do one test flight. the next ones from then on will start to be rotating crewmembers on the american vehicle. host: how much input do you and the other crew members have too these private companies? how is it received? i personally don't have input. office does have input. it is received quite well from folks who do that work. because these companies want to succeed, they want the contracts and they want to build a good vehicle. they do listen and try to make the best vehicle they can.

there is cost analysis going on at the same time. they can't build the most luxurious cadillac out there, how ever they do build a good vehicle. far as the station itself, how long is it going to remain functional? that is a good question. onht now, i believe it is track until 2024. that is for the life of components and resupply missions for certain things. it could go longer if we wanted, it all depends on where we want to spend our money. host: what you mean by that? the nasa budget is limited. a portion of it goes to the u.s.-based asia in and keeping it running. if we have a different task that

we want to take on, say going to the moon or mars or an asteroid, we might not be able to do both at the same time given how take each plan is. is the role of the station in future manned spaceflight past the moon? now i think for helping the future of spaceflight, the station is a test bed. right now we have a recycling system for water that we are working on. we recycle all of our water. we need that to go to other places. newre testing out technologies out here that will enable us to go farther. would see the station is needed past 2024? guest: that is a good question. i am not sure it is needed. it would definitely be a good test that for all sorts of things. we can easily get things up and

down from here, more than if you're going on a long mission somewhere else. if you want to make an update to your product or your equipment you can do that more easily. it is a great test that. however, it is all about having a limited amount of money and where you want to spend your money and what are your object is. by 2024, nothing is decided about the future of the station, what happens to it? does it just fall to the earth? that is going to be a decision for management. is considered by our politicians and the administration. however, if they decided is no longer needed, yes, we will do your but the station and it will burn up on reentry. commander swanson, every day we go through our normal lives in aur normal

gravity atmosphere. tell our viewers something may expect baseday not on the environment that you are in. guest: it is really the simple things that matter. it is much more difficult appear. morning andn the shave and get ready. still -- it is little things like that in the morning. you don't have a sink to wash up in. the water does not run down. you have to shave totally differently. you have to brush your teeth differently. eating is also a chore. things, andttle even tying your shoe ends up being difficult. over toravity to bend tie our shoe. you don't have that here so you have to be a little more flexible. all these little things that you didn't think about make it just

a little less efficient to be up here. however, there are many benefits. we do love it appear. this whole floating thing is just a very fun thing to do. looking out the window is fantastic. it just can't be beat. earth,nce you return to what happens? how does your body adjust? guest: we work out two hours every day out here to help in that return. the idea is that our muscles as strong and we will not have lost any bone density. we just have to worry about our normal vestibular system. it varies a lot between people. underou get that back control, you are still strong and your bones are good. it takes about six weeks worth of rehab right now and you are back up into the 95 percentile,

maybe higher than that, how you're feeling and what you can do. host: how long have you been on board the space tatian? i have been on board about two and a half months and i returned in three months. your background is in computer science. how do you end up an astronaut on a space tatian? space station? i decided that being an astronaut was a goal. craft worked on air control systems. that was my main work for nasa. that played into working on the shuttle. selectionlucky in the process. there are so may qualify people who try to be astronauts. it takes a little bit of luck to get in and i happened to get a little are key. i have all the requirements

needed and a little bit of luck and i made it. seconds, tell 30 us about the best experience you've had aboard the station itself. experience ist probably looking out the window. spacewalk is probably the best experience. it is a fantastic feeling. there is a little pressure on you at the same time, but it is quite an experience and it is something i am looking forward to doing again. host: commander steven swanson who is on board the international space station talking to us about his experiences there. thanks for talking with c-span. guest: [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

forutting you in the room congressional hearings, briefings, conferences offering complete apple to gavel coverage of the house all as a public service of private industry. we are c-span, created by the cable industry dirty five years ago and brought to you as a public service. watch us in hd, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. last month, the u.s. unemployment rate dipped to 6.1% adding 288,000 jobs according to figures released today by the bureau of labor statistics. the president talked about the job numbers and the u.s. economy in a visit to a tech startup hub in washington, d.c. >> this is an incubator for all sorts of tech startups, a lot of them focus on social change issues, education, health care.

we have a range of entrepreneurs who are trying to figure out how we can do well by doing good in many cases. i just have to say that the young people, and some not so young people, that i spoke to coming from a wide range of backgrounds, we have former army rangers, lawyers, former hr folks, transportation experts, engineers, all of them had the kind of energy and drive and creativity and innovation that has been the hallmark of the american economy. part of the reason i want to come here today is to focus on what has happened in the u.s. economy over the last several months and the last several years.

we got jobs report today showing that we have now seen the fastest job growth in the united states in the first half of the year since 1999. [applause] this is also the first time we have seen five consecutive months of job growth over 200,000 since 1999. [applause] and we have seen the quickest drop in unemployment in 30 years , so it gives you a sense that the economy has built momentum, that we are making progress. we have now seen almost 10 million jobs created over the course of the last 52 months, and it should be a useful reminder to people all across the country that given where we started back in 2008, we have made enormous strides, thanks to

the incredible hard work of the american people and american businesses that have been out there competing, getting smarter, getting more effective, and it is making a difference all across the country. now, what we also know is, as much progress has been made, there are still folks out there who are struggling. we still have not seen as much increase in income and wages as we would like to see. a lot of folks are still digging themselves out of challenges that arose out of the great recession. historically, financial crises take longer to recover from. we have done better than the vast majority of other countries over the last five years, but that drag has still meant a lot

of hardship for a lot of folks. it is really important for us to understand that we could be making even stronger progress. we could be growing even more jobs, we could be creating even more business opportunities for smart, talented folks like these. if those of us here in washington were focused on them, focused on you, the american people rather than focused on politics. i have given a number of examples over the last several months of things we know would work if we are investing in rebuilding our infrastructure. that puts engineers back to work, construction workers, landscape architects, folks who are manufacturing concrete or steel back to work. it makes a difference. it has a huge ripple effect all across economy. if we are serious about

increasing the minimum wage, that puts more money in the pockets of people who are likely to spend it. they in turn are more likely to hire more people, because they now have more customers who are frequenting their businesses. if we are making sure that there is equal pay for equal work, that is helping families all across the country. if we are focused on making sure that childcare care is accessible and affordable and high-quality, that frees up a whole bunch of potential entrepreneurs as well as people who are going to work every day doing the right thing, being responsible, but often are hampered by difficult situation in terms of trying to manage parenting and families. there are just a series of

specific things we can do right now, many of them i'm doing on my own. we have the administrative authority to do it, but some of them we can't do without congress. we can't fix a broken in it -- immigration system that would allow incredibly talented folks who want to start businesses here and create jobs here in the united states, would allow them to stay and make those investments. that is something that we need congress to help us on. we are not going to be able to fund the highway trust fund and ramp up our investment in infrastructure without ask of congress. -- acts of congress.

people should look at today's news and understand that we are making strides. we have not seen more consistent job growth since the 90's, we can make even more progress if congress is willing to work with my administration and to set politics aside, at least occasionally, which i know is what the american people are urgently looking for. that is our job, that is where we should be focused. it is worth remembering as we go into independence day. thank you, everybody. [applause] >> our endowment is the largest just shy ofrically $600 million. but that in, vanderbilt is in our group and they are at $6 billion. harvard, which represents the

knuckle of the nation's endowment is an $34 billion and they have a $6 billion campaign going on right now just to put it in it. if we're going to aspire to have excellence, those type of facilities on our campus then we have to have that type of investment. ins my responsibility now the 17th president's responsibility when he or she is named to go out and inshore we expand those revenue streams. interimoward university president on challenges facing the predominately black university sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on c-span "q and a." and martingel dempsey discussing iraq in a news briefing at the pentagon talking about efforts to protect u.s. embassy personnel and assist the iraqi government. this is half an hour.

>> good morning, happy early fourth of july. i hope you all have big plans tomorrow. i'm going to make a couple of opening comments and then ask chairman jim west german dempsey for some thoughts and then we will go to your questions. i know you have been receiving updates on the situation in iraq on a regular basis. i would like to focus a couple of comments on iraq as i start. our efforts here at dod have been focused on two specific

missions. i want to lay out a bit of a framework down on what those missions are. i know you will have questions, but in a very clear and deliberate way, securing our embassy, facilities and our personnel in iraq. second, assessing the situation in iraq and advising iraqi security forces. both of these missions are important components of the president's overall strategy in iraq. helping iraq's leaders resolve the political crisis that has enabled i s i l's advance in

supporting iraqi forces. by reinforcing security at the u.s. embassy, and support facilities at the dead international airport, we are helping provide our diplomats time and space to work with sunni, kurd, shia political leaders, as it attempts to form a new, inclusive national unity government. by better understanding the conditions on the ground and the capabilities of the iraqi security forces, we will be better able to help advise them as they combat isil forces inside their own country. approximately 200 military advisers are now on the ground. we have established a joint operations center with iraqis in baghdad. we have personnel on the ground and in the field, where our second joint operations center has achieved initial operating capability. forces. none of these troops are performing combat missions. none will perform combat missions.

president obama has been clear that american combat troops are not going to be fighting in iraq again. the situation in iraq, as you all know, is complex and it's fluid, but there is no exclusively military solution to the threats proposed by isil. our approach is deliberate and flexible and designed to bolster our diplomatic efforts and support the iraqi people. we will remain prepared. as most americans enjoy this holiday weekend, military around the world and especially in the middle east will stay postured for any contingency in that region. as we celebrate independence day tomorrow, i want to particularly express my gratitude to the men and women and their families, who serve our nation at home and

abroad, both civilian and in uniform. thank you all for what you do to keep our country safe every day. now ill ask chairman dempsey for his comments and we'll take questions. >> you would probably hear from clint dempsey today but you're stuck with me but i'm sitting with the real secretary of dens. i will begin with iraq. the secretary described our current mission and role in iraq and the actions we are taking are part of a broader line of effort to contribute to stability in the region. iraq's future depends as much on political inclusiveness as it does on security, which will be an important factor in determining what we do going forward. we are, of course, a force that's engaged across the globe. let me comment briefly on my travels over the past several

weeks and some of the insights that i gained. in brussels, i met with my nato counterparts. preparations in afghanistan and the threat of further russian coercion and weigh heavily on our european allies. the joint chiefs met with the united kingdom chiefs in london. we talked through common strategic concerns and now is not a time for business as usual in europe. i met with my counterparts in saudi arabia and united emirates and they are plagued with instability. i met with partner nations in the pacific region. we had a frank conversation about north korean provocations and china's activities in the east china sea and south china sea. yesterday, i returned from hawaii where they are

participating in the rim exercise for the first time. not the first time they were invited but first time to choose to participate. military relationships in the region are important and we remain engaged. i met with my counterparts while in hawaii to discuss the national and regional implications of north korean provocation. this was the first time in the history that the chiefs of defense from these three countries, myself, its republic of korea and the japanese have met together in this context. across the board, these engagements reaffirm the importance of close partnerships in protecting our national interests and assuring our allies against an increasing number of threats. u.s. leadership is still regarded as the world's best hope for stability and prosperity. i think of the extraordinary men and women who safeguard these freedoms. they are on my minds as their

families. thank you. >> i was wondering if you could give us your most up-to-date assessment of the insurgency in iraq, what you are seeing, if it is imagining strength, and mr. chairman, you have mentioned the possibility that the u.s. at some point could use assets in order to go after high-value targets. i wonder if the mail tear has done that yet. do you see what kind of tipping point would you want to see in order for that to begin and would you have to communicate with iran in order to avoid any onflict or miscalculation? >> as you know, i noted this in my opening comments.

we have six assessment teams now on the ground in iraq. and we have two joint operation centers that are operating. these individuals who are making these assessments essentially focusing on your question, what is going on? the strength, cohesion of the i.s.f., an assessment of the strength of isil, where they are deeply embedded, all this is part of the larger sectarian dynamic that as you all know is in play in iraq. also part of what's going on is probably -- is an important process as any, and that is the process of forming a new government. that is in play and very ctive.

as you know the next time they meet is the 8th of july. now that said, both the chairman and i are getting some assessments back early assessments through the general, who as you know is overseeing all of this. we won't have the full complement of all those assessments for a while. but that is in process, ongoing. and you know that we have -- as i have noted here and general dempsey has and admirable -- admiral kirby where we have additional people, airport, embassy. all of that is essentially getting to your questions and answering your questions on a realistic assessment so we can

therefore be better prepared to advise the iraqis on what we think they need to do and the different dynamics that are presented there on the ground and how they can best use their forces as we continue to advise hem. >> if i could briefly, i think you asked me four questions. state of the insurgency, state of the i.s.f., whether we are going to strike and let me see what i can do. hy are we there? we are there we have two overriding national security interests. a stable iraq within a region that can be and probably should be a partner with us in countering terrorism that stretches from beirut to damascus and to syria.

they are a regional threat today that overtime could become a transregional and global threat and that's why we are there. the actions we have taken fall into two bins. one is we're protecting our personnel and our facilities to preserve options and we are assessing to develop options, ok? earlier -- you asked me about the insurgency. the insurgency after some initial gains and collaboration with other sunni groups in northern iraq made some pretty significant and rapid advances. they're stretched right now, stretched to control what they have gained and stretched across the logistic lines of communication. >> i don't have the assessment

teams' exact language but some initial insights is that they re stiffening and capable of defending baghdad and challenged to go on the offense. nd the call that they called out for volunteers is being answered and it complicates the situation frankly a bit. the reality of the assessment is it is being done in the situation and it is important to note that the assessment is being done as the political situation unfolds. and they will affect each other. the ability of the iraqi security forces to act on behalf of other iraqis will be affected whether they will be conformed to a government of national unity.

we continue to gain insights and establish trends. we will be able to measure some intangibles and some intangibles like leadership and it is very dynamic. trikes, that is one of the options that we will continue to develop pending the assessment and pending iraqi's political process. >> my question is very specific, what is your measure of success in doing that, how dune how much do you break the momentum. how dune mission accomplished this time that you can say, we have achieved those bjectives? and is it enough for the iraqi forces simply to be able to hold baghdad? is the measure of success that or is it the iraqi forces able to go north and regain this massive territory that isis has right now?

is the united states military prepared, if they have to, to defend baghdad and defend the airport? >> so, the questions get more and more complex. >> i don't see you in a long time. >> it's impossible to wrestle the podium away from john kirby. i don't think you have heard me say we will break the momentum. >> actually the admiral did. > that's my problem. the issue has been us for us to determine the ability of the i.s.f. to be able to stabilize the situation and eventually go back on the offensive to regain their side of the territory and what we would be willing to contribute to that cause and that's not a question we are prepared to answer just yet.

you mentioned the airport and you mentioned our intentions, remember the phrase i used is that we were protecting that which would allow us to preserve options. the airport, not the entire airport but for that part we need for supply and potentially for evacuation, we are protecting that part of the airport for that purpose. it is about deliberately first preserving options and then developing options and if you are asking, will the iraqis at some point be able to go back on the offensive to recapture the part of iraq that they've lost, i think that is a really broad campaign-quality question. probably not by themselves. doesn't mean we would have to provide kinetic support. i'm not suggesting this is the direction this is heading, but in my military campaign you want to develop multiple axis and squeeze them from the north and from baghdad and that's a campaign that has to be developed.

but the first step in developing that campaign is to determine whether we have a reliable iraqi partner that is committed to growing their country into something that all iraqis will be willing to participate in. if the answer to that is no, then the future is pretty bleak. >> what you just described is an open-ended commitment or mission to the u.s. military, a stable iraq, inclusive government, the ability to force isil into some find of treat or when is the end game. when will the president be able to say, let's bring our boys ome? >> first of all, this is not 2003, it's not 2006, this is a

very different approach than we've taken in the past. i mean, assessing, advising and enabling are different words than attacking, defeating and isrupting. we may get to that point if our national interests drive us there. f they become such a threat to the homeland that the president of the united states with our advice decides that we have to take direct action. we are not there yet. in terms of the open-endedness of it, you heard me say before that the ideology that stretches from south asia across the arab world and into north and west africa, the ideology which is an anti-western, very conservative, religious and in some cases radically violent ideology, we are stuck with that. a generation or two. it doesn't mean that we have to throw that rock and take it on by themselves. it should not be that.

and what we owe the president of the united states over time in consultation with the congress and explanation with the people of the united states is how we can deal with this long-term threat without having to repeat what we did in 2003 and 006. >> you said the advisers would not be involved in commenting. general dempsey, you have raised the possibility that the advisers could be used as forward air controllers in the event you call in air strikes that most people would be regarding that as being involved in comment. and second, you mentioned that iraqis to go on the offensive would most likely need help, which sounds like a prescription for sending in more u.s. advisers, troops, opening up supply depots.

is that on the table? >> there is a tendency to think of this as kind of industrial strength, where we are going to put a mountain of supplies someplace and that's going to require us to protect and then move it forward into the hands of the iraqis to ensure they use it and responsibly and effective. and that is one possibility, but it's not one that personally, i think the situation demands. i think the situation demands first and foremost that the raqi political system find a way to separate the sunnis who have partnered now with isil because they are zero confidence in iraqi's politicians to govern. if you can separate the groups and it allows us to be in a position to enable iraq not with a huge effort but rather with the special skills, leadership and niche capabilities that we

possess daily. we haven't made -- right now as we sit here the advisers are not involved in combat operations but literally assessing. that's their task. if the assessment comes back and reveals it would be beneficial to this effort and to our national security interests to put the advisers in a different role, i will first consult with the secretary. we will consult with the president. we'll provide that option and move ahead. but that's where we are today. >> you will not be involved? >> i think the chairman made it clear, these are assessment teams and that's their mission. their mission is limited and it is a clear scope of what the mission is. and it is to assess. it is to come back with their assessment of where they believe where we are regarding isil and other dimensions that i aid.

advisers or what may come as a result of any assessments as to what they would come back to general dempsey with or general austin and eventually me and the president, i don't know where they are going to be, but their mission today is making those assessments. the general is pretty clear. that wasn't your question. we have one mission today and that's assessments. and i don't know what they are going to say or what they'll recommend. we'll wait to see what general austin and general dempsey then recommend. that's the whole point of assessments. >> i watch television. i know that is going to shock some of you and i won't tell you what channel i watch. that's the wrong phrase. we will match the resources we apply with the authorities and

responsibilities that go with them based on the mission we undertake and that is to be determined. >> can you explain what this joint operation center in the north is doing, how many u.s. troops have been sent there and what is the purpose of it? and general dempsey and back to iran, what is your assessment of iran's strength inside iraq right now? what have they sent militarily? are you going to have to deconflict inside iraq and the decoys they sent over in recent days is that breaking international sanctions? >> well, first, on the two joint peration centers, you need centers or some kind of center to have component of organization and focus omission

and what you're going to do. and in baghdad, the first one that we had up, we had iraqis in hat mission with us. we're behind -- further behind in irbil and we will coordinate with iraqis whereas we put our assessment teams out as they are out, on their mission, their focus. and we get better information if we have cooperation and coordination from the iraqis. so that's essentially, they will have that mission as a centerpiece but will include oordination as well. >> on iran, look, anyone who has served in iraq through the years knows that iran has been active in iraq since 2005. so the thought that they are active in iraq in 2014 is completely unsurprising. it's probably more overt than it

has been up till now. they, too, have come over in ome ways to advise this call for young shia men to rise in the defense of their nation. when that proclamation was made, he made it for all iraqis. i hope so. that is a question yet to be answered. but the iranians are there and flying unmanned aerial vehicles and provided some military equipment. i don't know if it has violated any national security resolutions. that has to be determined. whether we intend to coordinate with them or not, we do not intend to coordinate them. it's not impossible in the future to have reason to do so. in terms of deconflicting, that is sovereign iraqi airspace. our i.s.r. and their i.s.r., that's an iraqi responsibility

which they are capable of ulfilling. >> going back to the air strike issues, a couple of weeks ago, senator feinstein asked you about the issue and you paid the point that it's not like looking at an i-phone video and you need clarity on the ground. two weeks later, is the clarity there if the president says i eed options to strike? >> we have much better intelligence picture than we did two weeks ago. the complexity is the sunni groups that had formally opposed the iraqi government in any case, they have intermingled with the isil groups in particular. and that's going to be a tough

challenge to separate them if we were to take a decision to strike. you might say does it really matter. i think it does matter. it matters for the future of iraq which allows me to roll back to the place i continue to start, unless the iraqi government gets the message out that it really does intend to allow participation by groups, everything we are talking about makes no difference. >> the united states has spent $25 billion, 250,000 army and another 600,000 security force personnel, they are going up to 10,000 isil, the public might be asking you, what did we get for our money? is it just collapsing? >> the collapse of the i.s.f. in the face of this radical extremist group called isil occurred over time.

this wasn't isil decided to drive across the board and everybody collapsed. they infiltrated into western raq, into mosul. if i know anything about their tactics, which i do, they bought some people off and threatened the families of others and remind pd everyone that the government of iraq was not operating on their behalf and ndermined the iraqi security forces and stripped away their will to fight for a government that didn't support them. at that point, it wasn't a fight. they didn't collapse in the face of a fight, but collapsed in the face of a future that didn't hold out any hope for them. it's different than collapsing in the face of a fight. what we are seeing now is the remaining i.s.f. is fighting and this is the important signal. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> my first reaction was surprise. i have worked for mr. sterling. i had coached the clippers and -- in the year 2000. he invited me to his daughter's wedding. i had no idea exactly what was going on. situation, i know elgin baylor. exactlynfused not know which set of facts mr. sterling stood behind and when his words came out, it was so obvious and .hocking, just disgusting findhe surprise of it, to that type of sentiment and one who relies on black americans for so much of his success and

public profile was amazing. i cannot believe that someone could have that much bigotry inside and think that it was ok. >> july 4, a look at racism in sports just after 11:00 a.m. eastern. later, exploring the red planet nasa officials. later, discussions on gun rights in the personal recovery of former arizona congresswoman gabby giffords. part of this year's new york ideas festival with discussions about business and the economy. you will hear from the ceo of chobani on how he created the popular yogurt brand. crowd sourcing for business startups with the ceo of kick starter. this is just over one hour.

a guest lukaia came as of a guest at dinner at my house and lo and behold i had chobani yogurt in my refrigerator. he is the most interesting person, who has revitalized a whole section of new york with his wonderful product. he will be interviewed by steve clemons, who one of these days you're going to open your closet and there's going to be steve clemons, the ubiquitous cleave clemons. >> thank you very much. don't be shy for those of you standing in the back. don't worry about the cameras. aggressively ram yourself through those aisles and get a seat because it's worth it for the lineup we have today. hamdi, thank you so much for joining us. you're a young man growing up in turkey. you came over here to study business and you said, aha, feta cheese. and we're not even at the

yogurt story. but you were going to make your fortune in feta cheese. i need to know why feta? >> well, two things. one is, i came to learn english. i didn't know a word of english. >> and feta was a great english word. >> actually, we don't call it feta, we call it white cheese. [laughter] the reason i came up with that idea is my father came to visit, and the cheese, the white cheese, is very big in our breakfast dishes. when i brought the cheese i couldn't find in the supermarkets my father said, is this it? i said yes. he said why don't you make some. i grew up in turkey, in cheesemaking, yogurtmaking. so basically my father not liking the cheese that i brought for him for breakfast made me go into the cheese business. >> now we need to jump to the real story here. how many of you have lots of yoplait yogurt in your

refrigerator? how many of you are danon consumers? how many of you are chobani consumers? this was not set up. i had no idea. i thought it could go really badly for you. [laughter] i just didn't know. but you moved into yogurt. and the story is fascinating. i'd love to tell you -- tell us the story real quickly, not about why yogurt, but tell us the story about why "entrepreneurship" and how you saved the town, how you saved the factory. >> well, i was to make the story short, i started this cheese business. it was very small, you know, struggling with language, with running the plant, trying to sell, all the small -- all the big issues that small businesses go through every day that i did. and i was going through my junk mails one night in in my office and i saw this ad and it said fully equipped yogurt plant for

sale and there was a picture of it on the front side of it. i continued to throw it into the garbage can, still smoking my cigarettes and making garbage. about a half an hour later i went back to that paper and took it. now it's dirty and -- yogurt. was a kraft i didn't even know that kraft made yogurt. >> it was a brand called breiers. didn't even know it then. but when i went to visit, this was about a 90-year-old plant. they were making yogurt and cheese. actually, they said it was the original plant that they invented philadelphia cream cheese. >> wow. everybody knows that. >> i know. so i couldn't believe the price that they were asking for it. i thought they were missing one zero. it was like $700,000 or $7 million. i was afraid to ask one more time. didn't want to look so surprised, so cheap. >> maybe you should have asked if you knocked off another zero. >> on my way back i called my

attorney. i said, i just saw a plant that i want to buy. he thought i was the craziest guy ever. and he told me a million things why i shouldn't get it. one, it was the largest food company, that it was getting out of the category. this was a plant this they were selling as is. that means all the mistakes and crimes and everything that's been done in this plant, it was on this turkish guy's shoulders. and then he said s -- i'll tell you one more thing, the biggest problem, you have no money. [laughter] you haven't paid me for the last six months. >> ah. >> it was true. i hadn't been paying him. so that was the thing. and i figured it out with a small bank. >> did you finally pay him? because this is on the record that it could be used against you, a confession. >> yes. he later said, i wish i was a partner with you then. so the first day i bought the plant with an s.b.a. loan, small business