>> no, it is crucial, and that some point we are just speculating. the evidence comes from so many places. first of all, einstein's mathematics makes fictions about things that we can directly access -- predictions about teams we can directly access, like bending the star light by the sun, which is tested in 1919 during a solar eclipse. just as einstein predicted, the stars were slightly shifted in the sky because of the sun's presence. you know the story well, but perhaps not everybody does, einstein gets a telegram alerting him his ideas were confirmed through observation and somebody asked him, professor einstein, what would you say if data showed that theory was not confirmed and he said i would be sorry for the dear lord because the theory is

correct. this is how certain he was for these ideas. but that's just one example. when it comes to cosmology and the big bang, we can use the equation to make predictions for how much residual heat should be left over from the big bang today, so-called cosmic microwave background radiation. and make predictions on how the temperature of the heat should vary from one location in space to another. and do measurements and measurements agree with the theoretical prediction to fantastic accuracy and that is breathtaking confirmation mathematics is not just speculation, the math is actually aligning with how the world works. >> give me an example of that measurement of the cosmic background radiation? they go to the north pole or south pole? >> there are many ways to access it. you can access it through satellite-borne telescopes such as wilkinson background radiation probe, which has done a fantastic job measuring microwave background radiation.

but the recent one i think you're referring to is biceps two experiment down at the south pole where for three years a team of astronomers pointed the telescope at the patch of the southern polar sky and extracted information about the microwave background radiation that again bears out a more subtle prediction theory. >> this is radiation that emanated from the bang? >> yes. so in the beginning it was really hot. and as the universe expanded, the heat diluted and it cooled down. you can calculate how cold it should be today. 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. that's the temperature of deep space, not when there's sources like stars nearby but if you're in deep, empty space that's the temperature but you can go one step further and not just calculate average temperature but calculate how temperature should vary place to place and math shows it should vary on the order of 1/100,000 of a degree, tiny variation. and do precise measurements and indeed temperature variation in

just the pattern that the mathematics predicts. >> what do you mean when you call something the fabric of the cosmos. >> that's a hard question. is space really a thing or is it just a unusual concept in order to organize our perceptions of reality? you're over there. you're further away in space. your table is yet further. is space merely the vocabulary that allows me to articulate locations or is space really a thing? nobody fully knows the answer to that but in einstein's general relativity and different people interpret it differently, i see space as a thing in einstein's theory. >> space meaning fabric of space and time together. >> that's right, space and time are stitched together -- >> and they would exist even if nothing else existed? >> that's right. that's right. and there's been a lot of debate about this. if you're to remove everything

from space, the moon, the sun, earth, everything, what would be left? would you have an empty universe that still has space and time or would you have nothing? a good analogy is if you take an alphabet and start to remove desserts z and x and a and b, when you remove that last letter, what's left? is it like an empty alphabet? not really. it's like nothing because alphabet comes into existence with the letters that make it up. is that true of the universe? does it come into existence only when there's stuff populating it or can there be an empty stage cause space time that could exist even in the absence of matter? i think it's the latter. >> there's a wonderful thought experiment, which you deal with i think in your first book, newton's bucket. >> yes. >> explain how that helps think there's a fabric of space. >> this is a thought experiment isaac newton came up with when he was trying to understand

basically if space was a thing. and he imagined taking a bucket and filling it with water. he noted that as you spin the bucket, the water climbs up the sides of the bucket. i think even kids do this at the beach, right? you spin it around and climbs up the side. >> we would call inertia? >> that's right. so the water has intrinsic quality called inertia that causes it to resist that motion and when it resists, it kind of gets pushed out and goes up the sides. so you can you imagine doing that in a completely empty universe? there are some issues about that because gravity is part of what makes shape so we imagine now taking two stones, same idea, connecting them by a rope and spinning them around. would the rope pull taught? to newton it was obvious the rope would pull taut, even in empty space so he said therefore was say rope and rock spinning with respect to? nothing there, no urge, no sun, anything, therefore the rope and rock must be spinning with

respect to something called space. space itself must be setting the benchmark, the reference with respect to which that motion is happening. others came along and said no, we disagree. we remove anything from the universe and take your spiny rock and ropey thing and it will not pull taut. it will just kind of stay complete limp and it's still an issue people debate. >> is there any evidence we can find one way or another? >> it's very hard to remove everything from the universe, right? that's kind of what you would like to do. what you do is try to find alternate implications of one perspective or another. i would say today, most people -- i haven't done a survey but most people would say would pull taut, space time does set the reference frame for certain kind of motion, accelerated motion but other who are holdouts and disagree with that.

>> what have we learned from the latter? >> we learned a lot. we learned how to build the biggest experiment our species has ever embarked upon. these are really fantastic temples of the 20th, 21st century. they are our pyramids in a sense. in terms of the science we extracted, most important thing is discovery of the higgs boson, the higgs particle. people know about the higgs, right? there was a particle predicted mathematically in 1964 by peter and many others who really deserve equal credit for it but it's just a mathematical idea that was a solution to a puzzle, how do particles get mass? how do they resist being pushed when want to speed them up or slow them down? and the idea was space is filled with a kind of molasses-like substance called now the higgs

field, like a steam bath we don't see that's all around us and -- >> and that gives mass to particles. >> that's right. as particles try to move through the steam bath, they experience roughly speaking drag force -- >> what is the relationship to the higgs field to the matter of space time? >> if the higgs idea is correct there would be virtually no distinction between them. this substance would fill every nook and cranny of space and in a sense it would be unremovable unless somehow you can re-create temperatures of the very early universe. analogy i think sort of capture that's idea is, you know, don't know if you have any tattoos? [laughter] ok. good. i don't know where you were looking and i'm not going to ask. but imagine that you start to have more and more tattoos and ultimately if you cover your entire body, the distinction between your skin and tattoo becomes kind of meaningless.

you are the illustrated man at that point. you're completely covered with tattoos. similarly space is completely filled with this higgs stuff and if you can't remove it, there's no distinction between space and stuff that fills it. >> what if they hadn't found it and found that there is no higgs field? does the entire standard model of quantum theory go out the window? >> that would have been far more exciting for a theorist. less exciting for peter higgs and others -- >> would we have loss mass and loss weight? >> i don't think anybody cares much about our understanding of the universe. would have shrugged it off, silly little humans. but the wonderful thing is to the theorist, we would have been sent back to the black board to answer these deep puzzles, where does the heft of the fundamental constituents come from? that would have been enormously exciting for an idea that we thought was the answer to be proved wrong.

it's not a misperception that physicists or scientists generally get stuck on an idea and they become so wedded to it they will hold on to it even in the face of evidence that suggests contrary. no, it's completely opposite. we love it when ideas that we cherish are proved wrong. this is the biggest opportunity of a lifetime to try to come up with the next new idea that will take its place. in this example, it was a wonderful triumph mathematics and experiment where the idea was confirmed. >> now, mathematics has led you to super strength area, which you are very associated. explain why the math led you there. >> well, since the 1960's and '70's, people have tried to put together einstein's gravity, general relativity that we have been talking about, together with the another theory. theory of the small ingredients, quantum mechanics -- >> einstein, on his death bed, he was doing that. >> sort of. einstein was trying to put gravity together with electromagnetic theory to build

a unified theory thinking that he could do an end run around the uncomfortable feature of quantum mechanics he didn't like so much. he was hoping in some sense to go this way and do that to quantum mechanics. that seemed not to really work out. so we're trying the more straightforward approach and putting gravity and quantum theory together and standard model of particle of physics, particularly higgs particle, successful, unable to put gravity and quantum theory together. that leads us to a new approach, at least on paper, super strength theory does put gravity and quantum mechanics together. >> is there anything coming up in the next five or ten years you would say would help give you a physical test of what you're doing there? >> no. i wish the answer -- i can go speculative here. speculation on speculation. which is an uncomfortable place to be. just to say, we don't believe any of these ideas until they make predictions they can test.

let's be real clear, if you ask me do i believe in strength theory, the theory is absolutely no, i never have and i never will until there's experimental data that supports it. having said that, it's the most promising and i have to tell you mathematically compelling approach to putting gravity and quantum mechanic together and that's an important puzzle to solve. that drives us to continue working on it. in the best of all worlds, turn it back on in 2015, is it possible some of these ideas will make contact with observation? possible. we could see evidence of extension. particles slam together, some of the debris get knocked out of our dimensions according to the math. we would recognize that by loss of energy. people are looking for this. whole class of particles called super symmetric particles that theory predicts we haven't yet seen. we can see microscopic black holes that would decay into a spray of other particles. all of these things are possible

but i don't like to place hope on them in that i consider them long shots. so when they don't come through, i don't want it to be hey, you guys predicted that would happen and then it didn't. no. it's possible but unlikely. >> is it inevitable and super strength theory there are other universes? >> it's not inevitable. it's one of the very controversial developments over the last years. >> would you believe it's true? >> again, believe is a funny, funny word. do believe in other universes? absolutely not. do i find it a compelling possibility and can i see how the math naturally suggests it, and does that compel me to work on it? it does. but until there's observation or experiment to support, i don't believe anything. >> and i guess einstein once said that one of the grand questions was, did the good lord have a choice in the way he invented the universe.

explain that and answer it for us. >> for einstein. so einstein asked a very important question, which is could the universe about on otherwise? could the mass of the particles be different? gravity behaved differently? did god, did the lord have a choice or is somehow that dictated by logic and mathematics alone? and we don't know the answer but if these ideas of other universes are correct, then it's completely opposite. it may be that every possibility is played out on the grand landscape of reality. rather than one unique universe, it might be all possible universes. the truth is probably somewhere in between. >> we have run out of time but let me hit you with a couple quick things. one of which is why does this all matter? >> if you ask my mom, it doesn't, right? >> she wanted you to be a doctor. >> exactly. gives her a headache, all of that kind of stuff. but i think it helps many people get a sense of how we fit into the larger picture.

how we're part of this spectacular cosmos. i don't consider it making us somehow small and insignificant, although we are, but take into account these little tiny creatures walking around the surface of the earth can figure out what happened a billionth of a billionth of a second after the beginning and what things will be like a hundred billion years into the future, that to me is an amazing story. that is the most exciting drama discovery we have ever been engaged with. that's why it matters. >> so people want to hear more, there's a world science festival. your wife is doing. and world science university. give it a quick pitch. >> yes, world science u is a new online platform that we at the world science festival developed to try to get these ideas out to the general public but not just the level we're talking about it here, which is exciting but real math behind it in a highly produced, highly visual way if you like relativity or this kind of stuff. check it out. fun to learn.

>> google world science u. >> yes. >> and brian greene. festival is when? >> may 28 to june 1. >> you can buy tickets. >> they just went on sale. a few are sold out but 50 events around the city that will allow you to immerse yourself in science. >> brian, thank you. journal, aashington roundtable of scientists. reporter talks about health care law and the need for additional primary care doctors. as always, we will take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. washington journal, live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span.

>> the internet content should remain free from regulation, especially by if not solely from the fcc regulation. it is like confusing conversation for the sidewalk. of course we want conversation to be free and unregulated, and the fcc has no place regulating content online. they have always made sure that the communication pathways stay open. we have a regulated phone system, the fcc does not regulatory say to you what i call you, but they do make sure that the communication pathways open, affordable, available, nondiscriminatory, and there for everyone to use. >> it is crucial to think about whether those platforms remain open the way they have historically. the internet has grown up as a network where anyone can can communicate. can help a small company becoming huge business.

>> more opinions on the fcc open internet policy and the flow and speed of web traffic. >> the search for extraterrestrial life was the hearing by the house science, space, technology committee. this hearing is an hour. >> the committee on science, space and technology will come to order and welcome to today's hearing, astrobiological and the search for life in the universe.

a couple of preliminary announcements, one is i want to thank c-span for covering this hearing today. that shows the importance of the hearing in a lot of respects and i want to thank the students from herndon high school who are here as well. i understand you had a choice of hearings to attend. in fact, you could attend almost any hearing wanted to and you chose this one because you thought it was the most interesting. and actually, that is one of the purposes of today's hearing. and that is to inspire students today to be the scientists of tomorrow. who knows, we may have some of those scientists in the audience right now who will be inspired by what they hear to study astrobiological or perhaps some of the other sciences as well. we appreciate your attendance. i will recognize myself for opening statement and ranking member as well. as we discover more planets around the stars in our own galaxy, it is natural to wonder if we may finally be on the brink of answering the question, are we alone in the universe?

finding other life in the universe would be the most significant discovery in human history. scientists estimate that there are 80 billion stars in the milky way galaxy. to date more than 1,700 nearby planets have been found by the earth space telescope. last month astronomers discovered the first earth-like planet orbiting its star at a distance where liquid water could be present, a condition thought essential to life. called kepler 186-f, it's only 10% larger than the earth and about 490 light-years away. the transiting survey satellite which will launch in 2017 and james webb telescope launching in 2018 will help scientists discover more planets with potential bio signatures. the united states has pioneered the field of astrobiological and continues to lead the world in this type of research. the sample of professional papers published in "science"

magazine between 1995 and 2013 illustrates the significant growth and growing popularity of the field of astrobiological. between 1995 and 2012, the number of papers published on astrobiological increased ten times and the number of scientific reports that cited astrobiological increased 25 times. astrobiology is a serious subject studied by serious scientists around the world. reflecting this interest, next september the library of congress and nasa will hold a two-day astrobiology symposium on what societal impacts could be of finding microbal, complex or intelligent life in the universe, whether life exists on other planets continues to be a matter of debate among scientists. around the world a number of astronomers listen to naturally occurring radio frequencies. they try to filter out cosmic

noise and human made interference to find anomaly that's could be from civilizations elsewhere in the universe. the allen telescope, financed by microsoft cofounder paul allen and telescope in puerto rico are two well-known locations for conducting radio astronomy searches for life on the universe. recently they detected pulsed signals that last only a few milliseconds. these fast radio bursts as they're called have caused scientists to speculate as to their cause. some scientists have theorized they could be from stars colliding or extraterrestrial intelligent source. others search for light pulses instead of radio waves. researchers run by the harvard smithsonian center of physics and university of california-berkeley among others use optical telescopes to try to

detect nano second pulses or other naturally occurring phenomenon. i hope today's hearing will enable us to learn more about how research on 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? that concludes my opening statement. ranking member, gentle woman 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 instead i will 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."

you can hear him each week as host of one-hour radio program entitled "big picture signs." 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 astronomy signal processing and electronics research. additionally mr. wertheimer serves as chief scientist for the labs seti at home program and associate director of berkeley wireless research center. mr. wertheimer co-authored seti 2020 and editor of bio 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 astronomy 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 biology. 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 worlds 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 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 marconian and invention of

radio, we have technology that would allow us to send bits of information across light-years 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 infected 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 kepler 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 arisen, we are extraordinarily exceptional. it's like buying 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 of astronomy 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 out two 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 kepler 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 earthlings 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 link 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 most astronomers would be lucky to use this telescope a day or two a year. we figured out a way to use the telescope at the same time other scientists are using it to detect 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 super 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 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 kepler 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 virginia 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 looking 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 arecibo 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 potentials i can 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 even 10, 20 years ago we did not know were there habitats that could support life? what 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 close to 2,000 so exponential growth in astrobiological research. mr. wertheimer? >> 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. 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 and lots of bits per 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, assuming 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, i might point out contrary to popular impression, this experiment isn't the same from day to day. people think you're sitting around with earphones listening for cosmic static. and, 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 improvement of technology or -- 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 much 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 aquaeous 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 it sounds like you have to look at a few million star systems to have a reasonable chance of success. we can't do that today. we have not 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 given the funding to do it. >> yes.

>> captured it well. >> now, when we find the other life 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 we will learn. if we can decode this signal, this is like hieroglyphics, 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 ever 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. the gentleman 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 kepler 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 kepler 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 kepler 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 astronomy and other fields? for example, how has seti research benefited other areas of science? >> i think that its benefit less 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 astrophysical phenomenon 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, microbial 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 europa 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. you said that if we hear from 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 old, 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 a transmitter. 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 won't contain a lot of information but we know we're not alone. >> ok, thank you, mr. chairman, i yield back. --the gentleman from organ shelewoman for oregon, would deal to me for just a few seconds. relatively junior gallic galaxy,re might be --

it might be interesting to find out what happens in a 2 billion year headstart, we may not recognize them as intelligent beings. thank you for being here. i noticed in your testimony that you said that there are 24 seti scientist on the planet. have hadthink when we a larger percentage of experts on our panel. thank you both for being here.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for being here. i noticed, mr. wertheimer, that you said -- i 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. i really am intrigued by your 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 that would not wonder if there's 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 colleagues said, the interesting question is, what do we do when we find life on another planet? can you talk, both of you, about what the plan is? to we announced to the world? do we 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 on the 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. there is the question of whether 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. we have had false alarms and i 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. >> of the 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? >> ceti 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 in west virginia -- one may 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 about that series. >> i think i have been on it. we may have been visited in the past, the so-called ufo

phenomenon. i do not share the conviction that we have been visited. i think that is not something that all of the governments of the world would have on few cated. -- obfus the 4.5 billion year history of the earth, the time of the ancient egyptians was yesterday, ok, so why were they there then? notve no idea, and i do find very good evidence. the pier mids, for example, were probably built by egyptians. i know that is a radical idea for some people, but they were very clever, and they certainly could have done that. i do not think there is any evidence that could convince me that we were visited in his store times. >> how about you? >> ufo's have nothing to do with extraterrestrials.

i think some of these are real phenomenon. some imbalance and say it has windows, etc., and some of it is people's imagination, and we know that because it ties to popular culture when jules vern wrote about flying saucers, and everybody started seeing flying saucers, and before that, angels, and when people watch movies, we get a lot of reports about what is in the movies. making money. >> thank you. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. collins. the gentleman from maryland is recognized -- the gentlewoman from maryland. >> thank you. i feel i should have been here earlier, so i apologize. i enjoy the discussion and testimony. contact,"te movie is " and every year, it comes out,

and i watch it, and i dream, and i think, who knows? ideais interesting is this -- and it is a little hubris, right, that somehow we are waiting to find them as opposed to them finding us. and maybe that is just the nature of homo sapiens. maybe that is what we do. but i am a little curious. dr., in your prepared statement, project,ssed the study looking to search nearby stars and those most likely to host a planet system similar, so the project as you describe it would examine a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, spanning from low frequencies, detecting possible signals from advanced civilizations. how are these identified, and how are you going to coordinate

the use of the six telescopes? >> we are not trying to use the telescopes all at the same time. we work with a lot of groups at observatories, and we would typically use one telescope and then another, and the stars that we are targeting, instead of targeting stars that we know have planets, and it looks like all stars have planets, and it looks like we will target the nearest stars, so that is our plan, just target the nearby stars. >> and you talked also about camino, this notion that there in, academically, studying this, but is there not a whole network of people out in communities who feed your fuel -- feed or fuel some of the research you are doing? it refers to me, because i do

not think we know the answer to that question. in order to do this, it would be like saying, sure, there are thousands of people looking for higgs boson, but if you do not have the instrument, it is very hard to do the experiment, and the number of those is very small. >> just dreaming and pretending. that is all right. you do not have to answer that. i was not serious at all. and then i want to talk about security issues in the time we have left. there was thehat attack, to withstand and in the earlier study, they found that there have been two noteworthy attacks and compromising. thousands of user e-mail addresses. can you give us an idea of the

current state of security? >> yes. in general, downloading software and installing it on your computer, you should be careful. it turns out that software is one of the safest thing to can in general, downloading computer, and the the reason is millions of people are using it and testing it out, and also, it has been running for a really long time, and it is open software. a lot of volunteers help us write the software, and we are now doing it with cell phones, and that would allow even more people to participate in the search. >> computer, and the of the questions, especially whenever you deal with open source, the challenge of the system's vulnerability ash >> i think open source software is safer because so many eyeballs can look at it. >> ok. i am done. i think i will just go back to

watching my movies. [laughter] >> thank you. german from florida is recognized. >> i thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you for abiding these distinguished witnesses for this fascinating testimony. very enjoyable. the facebook page every and get a factoid, learn something. i have not been there to find that i have already known your message of the day. very educational, very of the inspiring, and obviously very interesting, and the graphics are always good too, and i want to thank you for that. on your disclosure, i was really impressed with the number of agreements and grants. i am really glad that nasa is so

engaged with what you are doing there and still allowing you all to have a pretty free hand to do what you do better. better than anybody else at doing it, obviously, so thank you for doing that. obviously, there is some curiosity about project bluebook. do you think? >> first off, i want to thank you. all of those grants are for the research being conducted at the sepi institute. there is no federal money being spent. our scientists are doing astrobiology, life on mars, the outer solar system. this is, i think, a very productive line of research, as well. phenomenon,the ufo as we say, i am personally quite skeptical. some americans believe we are being visited. that is thei am really result os taken since the 1960's. that number does not change.

and, by the way, if you think this is an especially american opinion, one third of the french, japanese, etc., believe, and i do not. i absolutely do not. i think if we were being visited, it would not be controversial. it has been 60 years, for example. if you would ask the residents of massachusetts if you think you are being visited by spaniards, that would not be controversial. if they were here, everyone would know that. >> ok. we are good. stephen hawking, i believe, made about contact with extraterrestrials or other life. your thoughts about his comments? >> yes. so it is a controversial topic on whether we should transmit messages. that is called active seti or extra terrestrial

intelligence. most people think we are just any merging civilization and that the first experiments we should do is just listening, trying to receive signals and see what is out there. we think these civilizations are going to be peaceful and watch we do not knowt that. that may be naïve. just listening right now, and maybe if we do not hear anything in thousands of years, we should think about transmitting signals, but it should not be and up to a few scientists, so, that is a big decision about who should speak for earth, so i believe that is what hawking would say, as well. >> i am going to disagree with my colleague, dan. i think there is very little transmitting, and if there is, we are already doing it. yes, we are not deliberately targeting stars in general, though we have done that in the past. song tot a "beatles"

the north star years ago, and they used a fairly powerful transmitter, but the most powerful transmitters are coming off of the airports, right, for the navigation, and these things are already going into space. they have already reached several thousand star systems. any society that has the technical competence to threaten dozens, hundreds, thousands of light-years of space, any society at that level, they can pick up the signal, so if you're worried about this, you should shutdown the radar at the local airports. personally, i do not think that would be a very good idea. on -- your thoughts >> i am sorry. i am not familiar with the topic. theyou talking about nuclear reactor? >> yes. expert, ially not an am sorry. >> you are talking about towering spacecraft.

parts of our solar system, they are in the boondocks, or to jupiter and so forth. of 100, youa factor cannot use solar cells very effectively out there. you have to power the craft is some way. i would not worry too much about radioactivity because space has plenty of radioactivity. that is the nature of the causebut if you're worried about the fact that these launches could go awry, yes, that is a danger, but people are aware of that danger, and they try to mitigate that danger. >> thank you, and thank both witnesses. the gentleman from arizona is recognized. >> and to our witnesses, what have we learned so far? we have learned that the aliens do not like being -- the beatles, which i have trouble

accepting, and they do not like our television. somehow, i thought that would be funnier. couple of mechanical questions i sort of went to get my head , the current scientific understanding. an asteroid hits the world, hits earth, and a rock is thrown out into the stellar -- it carries does that dna survive, dr.? >> yes. , the idea that one world can infect another world has been looked at. people have simulated the environment in space and put some of our earthly bacteria in space to see how long they could survive, and with the dna still

be viable when it got someplace interesting, and the results as i understand them suggest that, yes, if you're talking about communicable disease within the solar system, could a rock from mars have seeded the earth, that is possible. the live with survive. it would remain. about you are talking other solar systems of the distances of the stars, the problem is space is a pretty harsh environment, even for a rock, because there is a lot of radiation, and a thing in there would be suffering for a maybe millions of years really before it gets there, and the general consensus that i've heard is that it would not be viable when it does. >> i think that is the current thought right now. >> i know asteroids have hit the

earth many times. an interesting question would be if light is found in our solar system, for example, europa. there could be something swimming around down there. i talked to elementary schools, and i have asked them, how do we get through the ice, and they all say we should use machine guns and bombs, and some believe we should meld our way through using mirrors. >> there is something in our dna which is different. >> if we do find life in our own solar system, it would be really exciting. is it exactly the same kind of life? does it have the same dna, the same amino acids, the same ?ucleotides that would mean that rocks are going back and forth between these moons and planets and our own solar system, and it already happened in one place and was carried back and forth.

that is not very interesting. what would be much more interesting is discovering life that is different, with the different chemistry. if we do find something like that on europa or another moon or mars, that means that the universe is teeming with life, and we can find it with two different kinds of life in our solar system, and that means there is a lot of life in our solar system. >> it leads to wonder. earlier, the chairman, and i mean this with all of the love in the world, was trying to say, give me a percentage. life out there in existence. i remember doing this sort of as a thought process with one of my andessors many years ago, from the beginning to today, 100 billion species or something of that, and how many can do higher mass, and to give you sort of a

-- we would use that as sort of a benchmark to try to do those calculations, and i guess our understanding is that it is unknowable of what is out there, what is not out there. we see the world as large numbers, large planets, these huge numbers, and -- >> on earth, intelligence has happened several times independently. creatures who are not necessarily as intelligent as us, we do not know mama but my guess is that on some planets, there are going to be selective pressures that select for different types of things. if you areected strong or fast, but you can also be successful in some evolutionary environment by being smart, and i think there will be places in the universe where it is advantageous to be smart. isand the fun on this one how would you ever calculate

that? how would you build your baseline to build from? is a powerful thing, to being able to put it into a calculator? difficult to estimate, because we have this one example on earth, and so i think the only way we're going to find out is to do the search. >> it is very a can, i think, to sitting around in the bars in europe in the 1700's, thinking if any expedition would find the hypothesized southern continent. what is the probability? can you give that to me to three figures before i find you? you cannot. i fund you? >> it is a reasonable hypothesis that even intelligent life can be out there. in the end, if you do not continue to do the experiment,

you will just have the drinks. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> inc. you. you both for your testimony, which was clearly appreciated by both members of congress as well as the audience, and i also want to thank the herndon high school students who have been here today. it has been a fascinating topic, and we hope this encourages you and other scientific subjects, as well, and in case someone wants to follow-up on this, you might go to the committee website, which is science .house.gov, and we will clearly have information on this as well as other things that would be of interest to you, as well, so thank you, and we stand adjourned. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> our endowment is the largest amount and is pretty healthy, just shy of 600 million dollars. now, to put this into it is at 6 billion at another area. harvard is at $34 billion, just to put it into perspective. have that type of excellence, those type of facilities, we have to have that type of investment, so it is my

to go outsponsibility and assure that we expand the revenue streams. >> the howard university interim president on the challenges facing the predominantly black university. tonight on c-span's q&a. c-span recently spoke with an astronaut aboard the international space station. he discussed the station operations and the latest research. >> joining us from the international space station, swanson. steven n, welcome tonso c-span. >> thank you very much. commander, if you wouldn't mind, tell us a bit about the current activities of the international

space station. how many members of crew do have, and generally, what are you doing? >> good question. we have six crew members appear, three russians, two americans and one german. mostly, what we do up here is science. we have 170 experiments going on right now. we have to maintain the station and keep it running smoothly and efficiently. host: with the experience -- -- experiments you are conducting, what categories to the following to and why does need to be conducted in an atmosphere such as yours? >> 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. and we are looking at details about that, and that can have applications for people on earth with diseases. we can see it at a more rapid pace appear. the idea here is that things change enough that people can analyze how different pieces or 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. commander, because you're up there microgravity, talk about the extent of the science. are we talking basic research or advanced research? guest: it is both.

advanced research is looking for dark energy. also advanced research we do in combustion and cancer research, we're looking at t cells. there is also just basic science. we are trying to understand certain basic physics properties and other things. there is so much science going on, it is just amazing. host: how my experiments are nasa sanctioned and taxpayer-funded? how many are experiments you take on from other sources? guest: i don't really know the numbers, but they definitely come from different sources. we have from nasa and european space agencies and the japanese space agency and some from the russians. and then we have a whole group which takes in science experiments from all over the u.s. and combines them into a sort of group from that area. ah and they get to also fly on

too, so there are a whole bunch of different places where our experience come from. i just do not know the 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? guest: that is a good thing. first of all, you can see anything you hold. floats a little bit when you let go of it. that is good and bad. the bad thing is, if i don't 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.

yes 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? how long did it take you to get used to that? guest: definitely at the beginning, it is definitely more difficult. we have little competition is now. you have to get the rotation without any side movement. and then you can see how many rotations you do before you hit something. it is a little competition we do up here. host: how large is the station? what are we talking size wise? guest: it is about the volume of a 747, really. it is quite big, about 250 feet and soit is quite big, about 250 feet, long. at certain spots it is maybe 100 -- 130 war 140 feet wide. it is quite big volume wise. it is not like we're crowded up here at all.

said there were six people from different countries up there. what is a working relationship like between the countries represented up there? guest: is a very good working relationship. up here. we have trained beforehand as a crew, and 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 differences, but we have learned those and have learned to get around different issues, so 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. do those issues get discussed on board and do you get any discussions about what is going on on earth? guest: yes, they do get discussed, just like any news event that comes on. we all discuss it. it is not like there is any negative to it, though. we understand it is politics

going on. we understand all of that. 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? guest: that is a good question. it varies on the topic. but say on u.s.-russia , relations, we delve more into the politics of each country and more of the details about the cultures and what that means in each country. it kind of -- you break it down that way and you can see what is going on a little more clearly. host: on the science side, if for instance russia decided at , one point because of relations they wanted to pull back on work on the space station, how is the united states affected by that? and how is the science experiment affected by that?

guest: right now, the science is pretty much separated between the u.s. side, which i should say includes the european space agency, canada, all of those, and then the russian side. science is somewhat separated. we do require the russians to get up here and get down. right now. hopefully, in a few years, we will not need that, but right now, we need that to happen. that is probably the biggest deal right there. if we can't get up here, we can't do the science. host: commander, you can move around if you want and take the mic with you. as far as manning and staffing the station, much of that now depends on commercial spacecraft. what is the experience with these commercial spacecraft staffing and supplying the station? guest: right now they are just supplying the station. and we are very happy that we

have american cargo vehicles coming up. it is a great advancement. these are good vehicles. and so it does offload our , dependence on russia and other countries for that. so we are happy about that and definitely looking forward to the next development will we do get new crew on an american vehicle. and that will change our dynamic quite a bit. for right now, it is just the cargo coming up. as a matter of fact, hopefully, we will have one come up in less than a month and give us new food and new science to work on. host: as far as the next step, what is involved in the next step, and how do things change? guest: the next step is actually proving out that the vehicle is safe for humans, which we have a few companies now who are bidding for that opportunity right now. once they start in their

project, the end of the project hopefully by the end 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 -- to these private companies? how is it received? guest: i personally don't have input. but our astronaut office in nasa does have input. it is received quite well from talking to the folks who do that work. because these companies want to succeed, they want the contracts and they want to build a good vehicle. they really do, and so, they really do listen and try to make the best vehicle they can. of course there is cost analysis , going on at the same time. they can't build the most luxurious cadillac out there,

however, they do build a good vehicle. host: you talked about these dates, 2017, and as far as the station itself, how long is it going to remain functional? guest: that is a good question. right now, i believe it is on paper for 2024. and that is basically 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? --st: well, if we want to go 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, or were ever it happens to be,

-- wherever it happens to be, we might not be able to do both at the same time given how take each plan is. host: what is the role of the station in future manned spaceflight past the moon? guest: right now i think for helping the future of spaceflight, the station is a test bed. we test all sorts of things up here. right now we have a recycling system for water that we are working on. so we recycle all of our water. and we need that if we want to go to other places. we are testing out new technologies out here that will enable us to go farther. host: so you would see the station is needed past 2024? guest: that is a good question. [chuckles] 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. bed. is a great test 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. host: so say by 2024, nothing is decided about the future of the station, what happens to it? does it just fall to the earth? guest: again, that is going to be a decision for management. that is considered by our politicians and the next administration. however, if they decided is no longer needed, yes, we will do your but the station and it will burn up on reentry. host: commander swanson, every day we go through our normal lives in a gravity atmosphere. what is it like in a weightless atmosphere?

something theys may not expect based on the environment that you are in. guest: yeah, it is really the simple things that matter. it is much more difficult up here. you get up in the morning and shave and get ready. i 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. because everything floats, a again, and it comes in packages, and it wants to go everywhere, so all these little things, and even tying your shoe ends up actually being difficult. because it takes gravity to bend over to 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 up here. this whole floating thing is just a very fun thing to do. looking out the window is fantastic. it just can't be beat. , oncecommander swanson you return to earth, what happens? how does your body adjust? guest: that is a good question. we work out two hours every day out here to help in that return. the idea is that our muscles will be as strong and we will not have lost any bone density. we just have to worry about our neuralvestibular system. it varies a lot between people. once you get that back under control, you are still strong and your bones are good. so 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?

-- station? guest: i have been on board about two and a half months and i return in three months. host: your background is in computer science. how do you end up an astronaut on a space station? guest: a good question. i did go to work for nasa, which was a big help. i decided that being an astronaut was a goal. i also worked on air craft control systems. that was my main work for nasa was on. that played into working on the shuttle. and i got lucky in the selection 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 lucky. theppen to have all of requirements needed and a little bit of luck and i made it.

host: in about 30 seconds, tell us about the best experience you've had aboard the station itself. guest: the best experience is probably looking out the window. spacewalk is probably the best experience. heading out the door. 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. commander thanks for talking , with c-span. guest: my pleasure. take care. >> tomorrow, the new america foundation looks at nsa surveillance and how it might be compromising privacy and security of the internet. two members of congress will be a part of that conversation as well as a cyber security

professional and a representative from google live at 4:00 p.m. eastern on c-span three, and later on, we will hear from the nato secretary-general, giving a preview of an upcoming nato summit in september. he will be speaking at the atlantic council in washington, d.c., and coverage begins around 5:15 p.m. on c-span. >> now you can keep in touch with current events in the nation's capital using any phone, anytime, with c-span radio now. to get congressional coverage, public affairs forms, and today's washington journal program, and every day, listen to the days events on washington today. you can hear audio and public affairs programs beginning sundays at noon eastern. c-span radio on audio now. call now.

long distance or phone charges may apply. >> next, kenneth feinberg announces the gm compensation plan for those affected by the faulty ignition switches. gm has acknowledged the defects were responsive for for as many as 64 crashes and resulting in deaths. programs compensation for the september 11 attacks and the boston marathon bombings. this conference is one hour. [inaudible conversations] >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen. thank you all for coming this morning. my name is kenneth feinberg, and i've been assigned the task of designing and administering the gm ignition compensation claims

resolution protocol, the gm ignition switch compensation program. i want to spend a few minutes this morning, a, an overview of the program, how we got where we are. secondly, i want to summarize the eligibility criteria for claimants who can file a claim. there are and third, i want to explain a bit the dollars and the compensation that is available under the ram. under the program. we started drafting this protocol about two months ago at, initially, gm's request. we have reached out to a wide variety of individuals and institutions to get as much information as we could about what ought to be in this ram. in this program. i thank general motors for their

total cooperation in establishing this program. they're funding it, and they're funding it without any cap on the ago regate amount of -- aggregate amount of money that's going to be available. gm basically has said whatever it costs to pay all the eligible claims under the protocol, they will pay it. there is no ceiling on the aggregate dollars. also, gm has said under this program anybody who already settled their claim with general motors before they knew about this cover-up or this ignition switch problem may rip up the release they signed and come back into this program to get additional compensation. so i've read that there are some individuals who already settled and gave up their right to sue

in return for compensation. they may now ignore that release and come into this program. and receive additional compensation. the program will begin to receive claims on august 1st of this year, a month from now. and i want to thank the deputy administrator, my colleague for over 35 years, camille byros, who's right here in the front row. camille has worked with me on virtually every one of these compensation programs over the years, and she'll be here after the press conference to answer questions that individual media may have. the program will commence on august 1. it will begin to receive claims between now and august 1. we'll have the claim forms, the frequently-asked questions, the web site.

we're translating the claim forms into french-canadian and spanish. but it'll be august 1 when we begin to accept claims. all claims must be postmarked no later than december 31st the end of this year. for accidents that occurred anytime up to december 31st, the gm bankruptcy is no bar to filing a claim under this program. it is no bar. if an individual was injured or killed, unfortunate, in one of these accidents before or after the bankruptcy, it doesn't matter, the date of the accident. the bankruptcy will not be a barrier of any type to the filing of a claim. now, we'll obviously have to stick around into 2015 because

people will file claims, some of them late in the year, and we'll need time to process the claims during 2015. but if you file a claim with the fund, a few points should be head about the overall program. first, the program is entirely voluntary. nobody is required to file a claim. this is a voluntary program. second, once your claim is submitted and we deem it substantially complete; that is, it has the documents necessary, we will process that claim. either -- if it's a simple claim, we will process it within 90 days to payment. if it's a more complicated claim, which i'll explain in a bit, we'll process that claim

within 180 days from the time it is substantially complete. we will work as fast as we can to get compensation, voluntarily-submitted claims, out the door to eligible claimants. a few other points about the ram. about the program. any contributory negligence of the driver -- intoxication, speeding, texting on a cell phone, etc. -- irrelevant under this program. irrelevant. contributory -- this program is about general motors and ignition switches. we have no interest in evaluating any alleged contributory negligence on the part of the driver. it is totally irrelevant. we have no interest. this program is aimed at

compensation for defective switches, not anything about the driver. who's eligible under this program? let's discuss eligibility. the following individuals can file under this program: the driver, any passengers in the automobile, any pedestrian, any occupant of a second vehicle involved this in the accident. all eligible to file a claim. we are not limiting this ram to just drivers -- this program to just drivers of a particular vehicle. and as i said, contributory negligence not a factor here at all. now, eligibility. there are a couple of

prerequisites to filing a claim. first, as the protocol spells out on pages 2 and 3, for a claim to be eligible, it must involve one of the model, make and year automobiles listed in the protocol. if the automobile that was driven and is was involved in an accident is not listed in the protocol that you have, the claim is ineligible. don't bother filing it. i am confident i will get many claims involving automobiles that aren't listed. i'll get claims, based on experience, mercedes, jaguars, cadillacs. build it, and they come. you will get a great many claims. but the only automobiles that are eligible to be considered

are the automobiles listed in this protocol. and if that automobile, that model, that year is an automobile involved in an accident, that automobile is eligible to be considered for compensation. if the airbag deployed in the accident, you're ineligible. airbag deployment, seat belt retention employment means the power is on in the automobile. ineligible. it couldn't have been the ignition switch. now, i haven't seen a claim yet eligible in trying to work my way through potential claims. i've seen many claims where the airbag did not deploy or we don't know whether the airbag deployed. fine be, -- fine, eligible. if we know the airbag deployed,

the power's on. there may have been a horrible accident, but it's not the ignition switch. so it must be an eligible vehicle with non-airbag deployment or uncertainty as to whether the air pga deployed -- airbag deployed, and those are the major eligibility prerequisites to filing a claim. but again, nondeployment, eligible vehicle, driver, passengers, pedestrians, occupants of other vehicles, file the claim. we will evaluate claim. and we will evaluate it quickly. individuals have suffered terribly in this whole experience deserve prompt treatment of their claim, and we will do that. think individual claimant who lost a loved one or any individual claimant who suffered a catastrophic injury defined in

the protocol, i'll be glad to meet them privately, confidentially and chat with them privately about any item or anything they'd like to talk about. honored to do so, glad to do so. now, if you file a claim, the test for eligibility will be was the ignition switch defect a proximate cause of the accident? that's right this the prose kohl. -- in the protocol. that's right out of the first year of law school. was the ignition switch defect in an eligible vehicle where the airbag did not deploy a proximate cause, also known as a substantial cause of the accident. now, here's the challenge, here's the challenge.

unlike the 9/11 fund or the bp oil spill fund, many of these accidents occurred years ago, decade ago. what evidence, what circumstantial evidence can be produced that will demonstrate an ignition switch failure as the cause of the accident? well, we have done quite a bit of homework on this, and there are six, seven, eight different examples of very valuable evidence that will help demonstrate a link between ignition switch failure and the accident. here they are. one, the car.

now, it would -- it is very useful, obviously, if the automobile is still available. unfortunately, some of these automobiles, the accident took place so long ago the automobile's not around anymore. but if the automobile is available, that is the best evidence, of course. we'll look at the automobile, and the lawyers of the claimants can show that it was the ignition switch, that's wonderful information. but the automobile in many of these cases, maybe most of the cases, won't be available. second, do we have the edr black box data from the car? very, very useful. that edr black box data that's in the automobile, if the data is available, if it was captured at the time of the accident by the police, by the insurance company, by the claimant's lawyers, by whoever, that edr data goes a long way in demonstrating ignition switch failure. so even if you don't have the

car, do you have the black box data? very helpful. three, what does the police report say at the time of the accident? some of these police reports are extremely valuable as circumstantial evidence -- airbag didn't deploy, contemporary witness statements about the steering wheel locking or the antilock brakes not working, witnesses that were interviewed at the time by the police reflected in the police report, very helpful bit of information. four, the photographs of the accident. we've already learned that photographs of the accident are enormously helpful to us this demonstrating -- in demonstrating ignition switch failure based on the impact, the way the car was hit or what it hit. very, very useful. contemporary photographs of the

accident scene, very useful. next, the insurance company. what did the insurance company say in its file about that accident? what is in the insurance files that -- insurance companies can be rather thorough in their examination of accidents, this their own expertise. what does the insurance file show? what does medical record show from the hospital? not just about the condition of the innocent victim, but what do the witnesses tell the doctors this the hospital, in the emergency room about what happened? my car suddenly lost power. my steering wheel locked. hi brakes didn't work -- my brakes didn't work. what do the hospital records tell us not only about the injury, but about the cause of the injury? very useful. next, warranty and maintenance

records. we have found that some people weeks, months before the accident took their automobile to the dealer or to an independent dealer complaining my car is stalling, when my key hits the ignition switch, it fails, my car stalls, i'm having trouble steering, i'm having trouble with the brakes, the antilock brakes. we would like to see as part of a submission of a claim any warranty and maintenance records that will help us in this regard. then there are some claimants, some individuals who filed lawsuits that are pending where there were pretrial depositions taken, where there were written interrogatories filled out, where we had expert auto reconstruction experts filing

reports. we'd like to see those depgs and that information -- those depositions and that information. all of these examples, and there may be others, there may be others. i heene, we've talked to gm -- i mean, we've talked to gm, we've talked to plaintiff lawyers, bob hilliard, lance cooper, elizabeth -- [inaudible] other plaintiff lawyers, we've talked to the center for automotive safety, joan claybrook, clarence diplow. these are people we've been talking with over the past few months to try and get a better understanding on the key issue who is eligible to even file a claim. before you get to compensation, you have to be eligible. and this is all part of the eligibility determination. now, you'll see in the protocol that if a claimant files a claim and the claim is deficient, we will not deny that claim.

we will work with the claimant to try and help the claimant get other information that will cure the deficiency and make the claim eligible. that is sort of a summary, discussed on the first few pages of the protocol, that is sort of a summary of the eligibility requirements. and we will work with claimants in an effort to find claims eligible in meeting the proximate cause standard that the ignition switch caused the accident. it is a real challenge because of the age of the claims, some of them. but we will work with claimants and their lawyers who have been very, very helpful here in trying to do the right thing. compensation.

there are three -- in the rote kohl there are, i'll summarize. there are three categories of compensation. one, we will compensate eligible death claims. unfortunate, innocent victims who died. remember, contributory negligence not a factor, we're not even looking at it. we will compensate individual victims of the accident who are eligible. second, a second category, a special second category. we will compensate eligible catastrophic injuries defined in the protocol. quadriplegics, paraplegics, permanent brain injuries requiring continuous care, double amputees, pervasive burn

victims with burns over their entire body. these are the type of catastrophic injuries that are a special category as defined in the protocol. the third category of compensation, less serious, more moderate physical injuries. requiring either hospitalization within 48 hours of the accident or, for those moderate injuries where the victim of the accident did not even go to the hospital or didn't stay overnight, outpatient medical treatment within 48 hours of the accident. that is a third category of compensation. now, the two priority categories for this program, clearly a

priority, are the individual death claims and the catastrophic injury claims. these are the individuals and their families most in need where we want to try and get the compensation out within 90 or 180 days as fast as we can. just as with the 9/11 victim compensation fund which is really the precedent we used in coming up with the compensation model, every single individual filing a death claim or a catastrophic injury claim may choose one of two paths to pep sayings in the -- compensation in the protocol. track a. all we need under track a is the age of the victim, how much she or he was earning at the time of the d