trouble exactly i couldn't agree with you more that in fact we do expect if there is a civilization just a tiny bit more advanced than we are that they can already pick up jerry springer or any other sit coms interview shows the nightly news they see what we're doing to our planet you know it isn't really a very pretty picture and so in addition to sending in this chaotic messages that we use to communicate with one another we want to send a clear signal to the extraterrestrial that there's also some rationality on our world so laiki have sat. this speech with which to signal us are sent out is very slow i say the closest was sun to about eight layer light years away so there's a reply it will come in what sixteen years so we're looking at decades if any aliens are out there so. is your whole work just sending messages in a bottle i mean hoping that future generations will get any answer because our

civilization will be completely different by that time will they even remember your role. excellent point and that i think has been the greatest obstacle within the seti community to send an intentional signal because some of said we're not ready for something that requires that long term perspective our position it may be is that we need to get ready for a long term perspective as a species in fact a lot of the problems that we encounter in our world today is because we're always looking for immediate gratification we want results by the end of the week or if we're really thinking long term the end of the next quarter but some good things take time so you're absolutely right that when we're sending our messages in a bottle we're sending many of them to many stars and it's critical that we keep track of where we've sent those and what the messages were so that if we do get a reply back we will know what the reply was in response to how do you figure out

what the aliens will understand what they won't i mean do you think human culture has something that transcends this boundary mathematical equations i don't know maybe music. you know i wish that when we're communicating with the aliens they would know english or russian or spanish or arabic but there's no reason to think they would have that in common so we have to say what do we and the aliens have in common simply by virtue of being able to make contact well if they receive our radio signals we know that they can build radio antennas that requires a technical sophistication and you've got to be a good engineer you're not going to be a good engineer on any planet if you don't know something as fundamental as two plus two equals four so that's what we begin with in our message simply explaining to the extraterrestrials here's how we count here's how we do arithmetic the interesting thing is by taking very gradual steps upward soon we can talk about the

nature of the radio signal itself and that's what the aliens have in their hands or that they pick up on their machines and so we focus on communicating some very basic concepts very clearly because that's the essential starting point once we have something that they understand that could open the floodgates to tremendous understanding where we can go beyond just math and science to talk about something as you suggest like music the beauty of music is that at its core it can be described in terms of mathematical ratios between no it's it can be described by the same terms physicists use an amplitude frequency duration and so by starting with basic scientific and mathematical principles we can begin to give extraterrestrial a peek into what it means to be human all right we're going to take a short break right now when we're back we'll continue talking to dr douglas and

back asha president of messy organization discussing what is going to be like to hear back from l.a. and civilization state. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then.

seemed wrong why don't we all just don't call. me. yet to shape our business comes out. and in again trade equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. and we're back with dr douglas fact president of messy organization discussing their prospect of finding intelligent life on other planets so dr black arts when you think about extraterrestrial what do you personally imagine there are like.

well the ones that we can contact are going to be scientists because that's the only way we can exchange a radio signal or a laser pulses if they also have an ability to create the instruments that allow us to exchange information but beyond that i don't expect that they're going to look like us you know they're not necessarily even going to have the same way of encountering the world that we do we rely very heavily on our vision vision has evolved forty times independently on earth so it's been very affective here but what happens if you're a civilization on a planet where there is a murky cover over the atmosphere and you need to get around through a sense of hearing or a sense of touch or a sense of smell you could still be a scientist still discovering your universe but your way of encountering that day to day could be very different and so that's why we always need to be open to new

possibilities for creating messages so that if they are detected they'll be understood jill tarter from saturday told me once that we tend to think about aliens as earthlings on steroids is it likely that we will be similar in appearance and how do you how do we wait thinking about it this way. you know there are some aspects of our bodies that we might find in other species for example we're bilaterally symmetrical the left in the right hand side of us looks pretty much the same but why would we expect the extraterrestrial to have say only two hands you know we see very intelligent creatures on our own planet with very different body types the octopus has more of a radial symmetry there's more of a circular symmetry to it and there is also the possibility of having multiple appendages so i don't think we can count on the extra terrestrials looking like us

i think jill is right that we we tend to think of aliens as humans on steroids because that's frankly what it's cheapest for hollywood to make but instead we may even encounter intelligence that is not biological at all but created by the biological intelligence on another world you know our first contact may not be with carbon based life but silicon based life computers artificial intelligence is we project our own development of artificial intelligence on this world some are saying within the next century will have very intelligent computers so those may be the nature of the extra terrestrials we make first contact with here is a point earlier can we study what other species might be like based based on where they might leave for instance what would allianz for a mean it's look like if life was possible there longer and i would say here chads

or no no it is seen as is a plant vs they would need anyone living on venus would need to almost have an especial is covering this incredibly hot on venus but one of the basic things that we can think about is how big is the planet the bigger the planet the greater the gravitational force and so that's going to favor as. species that's really going to be sturdy maybe shorter squader very solid and stocky on a planet that is much smaller than our earth it's similar to being on the moon which is much smaller it's a much smaller gravity and so there would be a selection through evolution for creatures that are maybe taller and thinner so that's one of the fundamentals that you can consider but then as you point out maybe it's the different environment so maybe there is aquatic life that's intelligent we know that whales and dolphins are highly intelligent on our world but there's one problem i mean there may be extraterrestrial whales creating

wonderful symphonies that they send to one another but if they never build a renia detector if they never send us radio signals we simply won't know about them so in some sense that narrows the kind of intelligence that we will make contact with in intelligence that can create a technology similar to ours so is there a planet that you are specifically concentrating on right now when looking for alan life a planet that you have the most hopes for. yes in october two thousand and seventeen mattie sent its first messages to a nearby star called lojban star this was in cooperation with the sonar music festival a project called sonar calling g.j. two seventy three b. and this is the closest star that has a known exoplanet within the habitable zone so it's at just the right distance from its star that it could support liquid water now the fact that it is twelve point

four light years from earth means that a round trip exchange would take just under twenty five years so those are some of the best timescales that we can hope for so that's why we focus on stars that are in our own galactic backyard rather than much further away stars how do you imagine earth will react to actually making contact will there be panic emergences security council meetings crises i mean what sort of reaction do you expect well if you believe hollywood you're going to see a tremendous upheaval but when we do surveys psychologists ask people how would you respond they say you know i think other people are going to be upset but i'll be fine but if everyone is saying that it it maybe there really won't be a big chaos i think over the last decades people have become more familiar with the idea that there may well be intelligent life out there and so actually getting

confirmation i think for a lot of people would be no big deal they're going to want to know when's the next football game that'll be the next thing in their attention and the world's major religions stress god special concern for the earth and humans what would that mean for religion as a whole once we know we're not alone in the universe. well it could have profound religious implications and for many years people said christians or monotheistic religions would have special trouble because of the idea that there is something special about life on earth but in fact theologians from christianity other religious traditions have said there's really no in compatibility if in fact the universe was created by god then god could have populated that with as many creatures as he or she wants and so i think even those religions that people have said will have a hard time absorbing it are really pretty comfortable with it and other religious

traditions like buddhism or hinduism already have a notion of multiple gods and incarnations throughout the universe so i think there'd be no difficulty at all there let me ask you this what do you think of people like former canadian defense minister paul hellyer he says that ellie is already contacting him and it's very discreetly and there are other people who think like him what do you make of it have we had contact already without knowing it. i think whenever anyone says the aliens have been very discreet and various or a petition you've got a question that. many and seti scientists need evidence we need proof we need something that you and i can look at together and say is this really from an extraterrestrial you can have as many conspiracy theories as you want about the aliens having arrived but unless someone can give me a piece of their spacecraft i'm not going to be impressed so we need to be incredibly skeptical that's built into the way we detect signals in seti and we

have to be just as skeptical about any claims that the aliens have come to earth so no i have never seen evidence any evidence to suggest the extra terrestrials have already arrived now there are so many who follow just out there who claim that aliens built the pyramids that allien still our water our oxygen i mean it seems this people are a bit wacky but only other hand they believe in las just like you believe in aliens and perhaps you guys are in that different. well i would make a distinction because you say i believe in aliens i think it's possible they're out there certainly devoted my life to trying to make contact but as a scientist i also have to be open to the possibility that humankind is the only intelligence in the universe now when people say that the aliens are going to come here to steal our oxygen or our water that just doesn't make economic sense but again the bottom line is that you can claim and believe whatever you want i mean who am i to question someone's belief but then the big question the science asks is

what kind of evidence can you give so that someone else can share your belief that's what's lacking from the u.f.o. community you said it yourself there is no hard evidence that elin's exist it is just a possibility and sorry as we know without speculating the earth is the sill planet where i laugh exist surrounded by the vast freezing black space of dust and gas so could our obsession with aliens be just a way to cope with enormous costs make loneliness i do think some people want to reach out they want to make contact because they feel like their lives are empty on this world my advice to them would be get a friend.