 Welcome everyone to the Science Circle Panel Discussion Program. This is a new format that the Science Circle is trying in addition to lectures. So we're trying a format of panel discussions in voice. So everyone make sure you can, you know, hear us in voice. And we have three panelists up front here beside me, Vic, Sizzigie, and SR. So let's all give them a round of applause. And today's topic is going to be the Fermi Paradox, which essentially asks the question in a, I think maybe we'll limit this just to a galaxy, but in a galaxy just all of potentially habitable planets and vast, vast amounts of time. You know, why aren't we seeing any aliens? Where are the aliens? So that's kind of the basic premise. I would like to begin the program by asking each panelists to give a brief kind of opening remarks about what they want to say. And then we'll kind of open it up to a little more freewheeling format. And if the audience members have any questions or comments, I will try to be monitoring the nearby chat and select questions for the panel to discuss. All right. So, Vic, if you're ready, why don't you start with your opening remarks? Sure. Okay. Let's see. Also, I can back some of this up with some pre-formatted text. One of the things to consider is that there are several factors. Some are environmental factors that are known, like evidence supported somewhere are not known. In other words, we just don't have enough evidence. Some are human factors, anthropomorphic. Some are known. For example, we have evidence or it's in the past. And then some we just have to guess at. So when we're looking at all these factors, think of those categories. Briefly, and then real quick, briefly, the argument was first made by Enrico Fermi back in 1950, and then by a guy named Michael Hart, and then Frank Drake in 1961 published his famous multiplicative factors equation. I met him in the late 60s when I was doing some work at NASA. So this has been a favorite topic of mine for about 50 years. I'm done. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Sorry about that. Thank you, Vic. A very excellent way to set the table for us. And Sissigie, do you have any opening remarks? Yes, I do. Thanks very much. Hi, everyone. I'm very happy to be here. The Fermi Paradox, you could frame it in a simple nutshell with a couple of questions. Are we alone in the universe? And if not, then where the hell is everybody? Now, the Fermi Paradox is fascinating because it unites so many fields, physics, biology, geology, the very nature of intelligence. Yes, that's right, Vic. It's 1933. I might have mistyped that. The Drake equation has been mentioned, and this is related to the Drake equation. Just a minute. Let me close the window here. The Drake equation has many factors to it, and one of the factors is the number of planets that each star has. And we have observations now of exoplanets, so we are actually able to make reasonable estimates of how many planets you expect for each star. So bit by bit, the Drake equation will become less guesswork. We can have a reasonable estimate of the number of intelligent civilizations that are out there, capable of communicating with us, which is what the Drake equation gives us. Then we have a way of addressing the Fermi Paradox. And we'll better understand the Fermi Paradox, and directly or indirectly, it may drive us forward in one way or another. One solution to the Fermi Paradox is that advanced civilizations self-destruct. Is that what's going to happen to us? I mean, we really want to understand what happens to other civilizations if they're out there. Or maybe the solution is that we're alone in the universe, and we've always been alone. In that case, we are precious because we are an oasis in the air and universe, which means that we must treasure the Earth and all the life on it, all the people on it. We must elevate ourselves above our petty squabbles and conflicts. And this is what the thinking of the Fermi Paradox can do for us. Okay, excellent. That was outstanding. Thank you very much. And our final panelist is SR, who is, I think, a universal recognition science circle. So, SR, do you have any opening remarks you'd like to make? Thank you very much. And it's the first time that I am joining here. And I am thankful to all of you. I would like to say Vick has made some great remarks about all those things. And I think there are some mythological ideas or something that are written in Hindu mythology too, which depicts that it is possible that there are many worlds similar like us. That is the only thing that I would like to add. All right, thank you very much. That's good. What I'd like to do with this next round of the discussion, actually, also maybe a little bit more structured than I anticipated, but let's go down the panel again and let's discuss maybe your favorite or some interesting theories that are maybe kind of the leading contenders for an explanation of, you know, why we haven't found aliens. So, Vick, why don't you start? If this seems like a good way to approach it. Sure. One of the things is just a couple of days ago at a conference in Houston, one of the SETI pioneers, I'm going to put the text up here in the reference, basically said that if you were to look at all the places we could be looking for intelligent extraterrestrials that and that area was the size of the ocean that we have only looked at a hot tub worth. And by looking on say Mars or the moons of Saturn or Jupiter, it's kind of like looking at a spoonful to see if there is life out there. So hopefully we may be able to find some microbes in that spoonful, but just because we haven't found a dolphin in a hot tub doesn't mean that there isn't intelligent life out there. Yeah, I think that is interesting. I'm not sure what I make of that because it kind of makes me feel about like just sort of statistical polling but normally you can, you know, just getting a small sample of a population can tell you a lot about the overall or larger scale as characteristics of that population. But I'm not completely convinced that the small sample size is completely dispositive, but certainly it's important. And Syzygy, would you like to make any remark sort of what your favorite explanation is of the Fermi Paradox? Or anything you find interesting about some of the suggestions that have been put out there? I somewhat agree with Vic. I think that there is life elsewhere in the universe, whether it's intelligent or not, is another question. I should post that link. I recommended this video to Shantel and Berrigan about the Isaac Arthur videos. They're excellent videos, they're very dense in information. And he lists something like 50 hurdles for intelligent life to have to clear. 50 hurdles from the conditions in the solar system, the conditions on the planets. And sorry, Berrigan, you want to say something? Well, I'm just going to say it does make it seem as if the fact that we're alive, that Earth has life at all, just unbelievably improbable. On the other hand, it strikes me that the Earth and our solar system are utterly ordinary, the galaxy. I mean, that's sort of our defining quality is that we're completely ordinary. So that suggests that maybe it's not all that improbable after all. I don't know what to make of it. Yes, but that's the mediocrity principle that somehow when you have something, you think that everything else is the same as that one sample. And if you consider 50 hurdles, they were interesting hurdles. He said that let's just adopt, say, a 50% chance that you can clear each of these hurdles. So that's one half to the 50th, so that's like one in 10 to the 15, which is a very tiny probability. The problem I have with that argument is that it's possible that those 50 hurdles, there may be some kind of connection between the different probabilities. There may be some kind of condition as that one probability affects the other. Well, I also think that the system isn't completely random because we have chemistry. And chemistry sort of makes some reactions more likely than others. It's not completely random like this rolling dice or something. There are kind of forces at work in nature that sort of, you know, sort of make things more likely than they're unlikely. Yes, that's a good point. That's what Nero Wonder was just saying. That's what I've been saying that the different probabilities might not be independent of one another. So it might not be quite that bad. But another thing that was brought up in this video, which is a very good point, is if you take the total mass of the solar system, then you take the total mass of humanity, assuming that we're the only intelligent life form on the planet, which is maybe not necessary. Okay, so let's consider that. Then that total mass, the fraction of the total mass of the solar system, which is basically the mass of the Sun, which is 9, is like 1 times 10 to the minus 19, which is 0.00 with 18-0 is 1. That's a very tiny fraction. So a tiny fraction of our solar system that is actually intelligent. Okay, so that's kind of sobering. SR, would you like to comment on maybe what your thoughts are about why we aren't seeing more aliens? Well, I'd like to tell you one interesting thing that has happened in my life. One day I was in my roof and I was using my torchlight and I was flashing it towards the sky. And I saw some, you can say, a reply back in the same flashing way. And it was continuous for about 15 minutes. So I don't know whether I should say there are aliens or not. But as far as our Hindu mythology is concerned, we say that there are parallel universes. And in each and every universe, there are intelligent people who are living. I would like to give the link about how the Hindu mythology describes about the whole universe. Thank you very much. I think Hindu mythology has a lot to say about the concept of mandalas, for example, and the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are just really seem to be imbued with kind of a celestial sense. Well, I would like to say one more important point along with that. In the Shiv Purana, it is said that the whole universe was dark and there was only one light. It was called Jyoti Lingam. And from there the whole universe has started. It seems to be like the Big Bang Theory. So it's my question that if there was some Big Bang Theory, someone has written that thing. So I think there are some parallel universe or something like that where people have seen all these things that has happened. And they have written in these things, in these books that we are... Nowadays we are trying to, you can say, search it out and find out what are the things inside which are very interesting for us. Well, thank you very much, Esar. I think that's a really valuable perspective on this question. I noticed in the... And also, Siji, thank you for the Isaac Asimov... Isaac Arthur video link in nearby chat and also to Vic for his characterization that he posted in nearby chat. And Erlanda asks about how about the age of those planets compared to the Earth? And I think that's maybe worth touching on for a little while. That is the age of the universe opens up the possibility that intelligent life has flourished in the past, but, you know, what we missed to them. And so let's maybe talk a little bit about the age, the age of the universe or the age of the galaxy and what kind of opportunities that might have presented for life. Well, that's a good question. The age of the universe is 13.8 billion years. The thing is the age of our galaxy, it depends because there are basically two populations of stars, what are called the population two stars, which are the older stars and the population one stars like our sun, which are about 5 billion years old, or at least our sun is 5 billion years old. So the exoplanets, most of them that have been found are more or less close to our sun. I don't remember the exact distances, but they are in the Galactic neighborhood and they would be around stars that are of somewhat similar age to our sun. Well, it's probably safe to guess that these exoplanets are more or less the same age as the age of our Earth. That's kind of the impression I have too. I mean, if anything, maybe younger. So that's interesting. So, well, I'll just move on. Sizzigie or SR, do you have anything? Thinking about the age of the universe, prompt any thoughts in your mind about it? Yeah, I would like to add one note on this. I'm giving you a link that everyone can see. In this link, if you go throughout it, it is said that as per the Hindu mythology is concerned, we have four U-guards. These four U-guards represents the age of the time period of a certain era. And as per the calculation of our Hindu mythology, the current age of the universe is about 155 point something trillion years. So it's an interesting thing. It might be for you people that every era has some years which represents the development of a certain civilization and its destruction. So that's the point from my side. All right. Thank you very much. Yes, go ahead, Vic. Yeah, I'd like to weigh in for a second. As I put in text, we could probably, like you said, figure out all the physical factors pretty soon. I mean, some are guesses. Like the video says, OK, if only 0.1% of the habitable planets had life, blah, blah, there'd be a million stars. And then I put a mathematical equation that basically said, OK, great. There should be somebody within 1,500 light-years. But really it comes down to the factors we really don't know. For example, how long a civilization is out there, how they communicate, whether they even care to or have the resources to go to other planets, how long that takes, all that good stuff like that. Because I mean, physically, if everybody, if the whole argument were a linear progression where you have life, it becomes intelligent, they communicate in radio waves or like we're doing here, they travel to the stars and that kind of stuff, then we should be seeing people. But the alarming part is why not? In other words, what happens? Do they kill themselves off? Do they kill each other off? Does the side know they're going to use the resources better than to go running around the universe? I mean, that's a really big question. Well, right. And I don't think that humans have discovered any special secret sauce about the universe that we're doing something weird that another civilization wouldn't do. I mean, radio waves exist. I mean, they were easy for us to discover. They're just there. And anybody can find them. And if you find them, then you're going to start experimenting with. And I think the same can be said for sort of a lot of the essential technologies like that. They're not hidden. They're just right there for us to discover. And I think other life forms would discover them too. So I think the idea that somehow the aliens would be communicating by some exotic technology or that they have discovered some secret sauce either means they're super advanced that they have a deeper understanding of reality than we're not even close to that. Or if they're kind of like us, then they're probably going to use the same stuff we do. I mean, we can only search for life that we can recognize, basically. Yeah. The other argument, though, is that we don't have any, like, radio wave fossils. We can go back on our own earth or other planets and look for stuff that was billions of years old, but they could have been chatting up a storm a few hundred years ago would never know it. We've only known about radio waves for a hundred years and even less time we've been listening. So, you know, it's kind of like a blink of an eye. And then if we don't see anything, we assume they're not there. So I kind of, I'm reminded of the discovery of the signal in the movie Contact. And sort of what it reminds me of, or I was actually watching it with friends who were talking about this, is that Carl Sagan's story in Contact really kind of lays out the classic sort of conventional wisdom of, you know, how we would discover alien life. And my friend said, well, you know, but, you know, I can barely get my Wi-Fi connected or if my Wi-Fi breaks, I can't even fix it. So what are the, you know, what are the odds that this fabric sort of multi-dimensional communication we get from the aliens in Contact? Because you remember how they discover all of these deeper layers of information when they look at it in three dimensions and look at it differently. So each time they discover another level of information, there's all this sort of a very complex transmission. And it works perfectly. They discover all of it, you know. So it kind of made me wonder sort of, you know, I mean, that's really what we probably would have to do to look for life, something that we would recognize as obvious to us. But, you know, is that the most likely form? Or are there, is it just as likely there are exotic life forms out there that we couldn't? Well, I have a couple of comments. One is about the uncertainty of the various factors in the Drake equation mentioned by Vic. One of the most uncertain is what's called abiogenesis. How did life actually form from inert matter? No one really understands that. No one really knows what the probability of that is. And as far as radio waves are concerned, there's an interesting way of looking at it, is that our planet has been producing radio waves or television signals as well. So we have episodes of Howdy-Duty from the 1950s that have reached like 60 light-years away from Earth. The question is, could they be able to, would they be able to detect those radio waves? Would they be able to detect us? That is a very big question. Because if they had a radio telescope, something like Aerocebo, which is an entire valley 300 meters, or the Chinese one, which is 500 meters, would a telescope like that be able to detect signals coming from the Earth? And how far away would they be able to detect it before the signal was lost in the North of the galaxy? And that's only like a fraction of a light-year. So if you have a civilization, if there are other civilizations like ours, not really advanced civilizations, they would probably not be able to detect them unless they beamed their signal directly at us. Right, or if they had some incredibly high-powered signal that could somehow make it to us, which, yeah, that's tough. Yeah, and Dick's right, we do know a little bit about how life forms, but actually how it forms in a wild environment of no matter, the details are still uncertain. Yeah, and I'm actually a little bit confused about, in some ways it seems like life just took forever to emerge and kind of become anything more complicated than a cell really. I mean, that took like a billion, like for a billion years, sort of nothing happened. Nothing really changed. And then sort of there was, and then there was a really kind of a gradual emergence of more complex forms until we had sort of a sudden explosion of life, which I think is attributable to an increase in oxygen from photosynthesis. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, Dick makes a good point. First of all, a cell is a very complicated cell. It is. I don't mean to diminish that, that's right. The first ones apparently are fossil cells, 3.8 billion years old, and the Cambrian explosion was like 500 million years ago, so it was like 3 billion years that there was no really complex life. Yeah. It was basically blue-green algae producing lots of oxygen, and when you have enough oxygen, then you can get much more complicated life because you have a good energy source. Yeah, basically getting to the cellular stage is fantastic, and we were able to do that, or we, whatever, life on Earth was able to do that within the first billion years once everything cooled and we got past some of the bigger hurdles. Jumping to multicellular thing was really not as difficult as getting to the cell part. Yeah. Yes, that's exactly right. The cell part is just sort of jaw-dropping that it happened. But on the other hand, the organization of the cell does... Oh, SR, can you turn your microphone off or turn it down? Thank you very much. We were getting some background noise. But on the other hand, the chemistry of a cell almost feels inevitable. You know, once you could get all sort of those atoms close enough together to start reacting and become and form polymers and things like that, you know what I mean? So the chemistry of it does feel inevitable, even though it's improbable. I don't know how to reconcile that really. Dragon, can I comment something? Yes, please go ahead, SR. And the thing is that if you look at the evolution of the human, within the last 15,000 years, the human has evolved in a very faster way. And past 1,000 years, the evolution is quite fast than it is expected. Dick and Siski are much more experienced than me, I hope. So I put forward the question in front of them that what makes it different? Because as far as my knowledge is concerned, there are some fossils that have been studied in Peru and they are questioning those fossils that whether they are actually the Homo sapiens or a mixture of Homo sapiens and aliens. Right. So maybe the aliens have been here. In fact, isn't that one of the Fermi paradox solutions is that, you know, there are aliens and maybe they're even among us, but they're, you know, camouflaged? Well, what if they decided to talk to the dolphins instead of us? You know, we'd never know, we don't know what dolphins mean. That's the plot of Star Trek IV. The aliens come to talk to the whales and the whales are extinct. Yeah, you know, it's the anthropomorphic thing. We think we're so special that they're going to come down and talk to us and all that. But, you know, they could already be here talking to somebody else. It's just that they're smaller and they don't care about us. That reminds me of a very appropriate limerick. The voice from the UFO cried to the smartest will give a free ride. Several men volunteered, but the ship disappeared with a whale and two dolphins inside. Very nice. Well, what forms of sort of exotic forms of life might be not just possible, but maybe kind of probable that we would actually have to specifically be looking for to see them like, I don't know, silica life like the Horta or an energy being like the one that fell in love with, oh, what's his name? You know, the discoverer of Warp Drive. Anyway, you know, just some kind of exotic forms of life that we should at least have on our radar maybe to be specifically looking for. In other words, I mean, what about sort of non-DNA life, something like that? Yeah, I'd like to comment, I have saved. Pryons. Pryons, if you look forward to them, they don't have any genetic material, whether it is RNA or DNA. They are just proteins. So it is an interesting form of life. Well, my personal belief is that viruses and prions are not alive, they're just particles. And they react with life, they interact with life, but they are not alive. But that would be the first thing we might find. Well, sure enough. In other words, they react with us, except that we might be too strange for them to be able to react with us. Yeah, yeah. But we're going to have to look, but if that's what we're looking for, we're going to have to look beyond radio waves. Now, they were just because we can't, if we go shouting out there with radio waves and don't see anybody, that doesn't mean that the next planet over isn't just teeming with life. It seems to me there's also, yeah, it seems to me there's also things like, I mean, what if the communication is just very slow? Like it's just coming to us, maybe it just takes, you know, what if it takes a generation for sort of wavelength bias or something? Or, you know, what if it's... Yeah, if they live on very cold planets, I mean, there was, what was it? There was a good science fiction recently about, well, no way to say it. It was the Arthur C. Clarke's 2061 or whatever, where they land on Europa or someplace. And the life that came out of the... Oh, yeah. It was really, really slow, because it lived in a very, very cold environment. So we could be looking at rocks, and rocks, we know whether, and they don't communicate the way we do. And I'm not saying rocks are alive, but it could be very slow. Right. Yeah, it could be, and things can, like rocks, things can exist for eons. And who knows what kind of processes might be happening that are just at such so slow that we can't... That seems more probable than highly accelerated life. Yeah, although I do like the Star Trek episode where there was an accelerated life, and it just sounded like buzzing in your ear. I don't know if anybody remembers that one. I do. Yes. Yeah, there's also reptiles, ectotherms. They depend on the temperature of the environment. And if they're cold, they tend to move slowly. Well, this kind of... That prompts me to maybe bring up that, you know, I actually kind of think that life not unlike ours is, you know, fairly... is probably among the most probable forms of life they are since we do have at least a data point of one in ourselves that sort of makes life like us the most probable form. And also simply because, you know, we are constituted of, you know, fairly common elements around the universe that would be, and lots of planets would have the elements that we use. And the chemistry, you know, if, you know, other conditions are right, water, I suppose, and so forth, oxygen, that it's not improbable because, you know, you would have animals with maybe a body pattern not unlike ours with limbs and maybe dexterous, you know, extremities like fingers, eyes, you know. Also, you know, that's the other thing about life is that life essentially generates senses to detect sort of everything that you need to detect. You know, electromagnetic radiation. Pressure and so forth. Pressure waves in the atmosphere with our ears. I mean, it sort of detects all the sources of information that are out there. That's kind of what life does, you know. I think, so I don't think it's that improbable that at least one of the forms of life that might be out there would be pretty similar to us. Yes, well, another thing to keep in mind is, which is sort of a slight disagreement with what you're saying is that the first animals to have global communication, the Global Communications Network, were not humans, but whales communicated with low frequencies for thousands of kilometers until there was too much noise from shipping. I'd even make a counterargument to that. The first communication was between trees. If you look at the root system that we're just now beginning to understand and some of the symbiosis with fungi. Yeah, all of that. Yeah, that predates whales by millions and millions of years. And also, elephant was global, wasn't it? It's not global, but forest communication is very vast. Forest and fungi communication is vast. Not global, like the whales had. But also, I believe that elephants detect very low frequency vibrations on the ground. They have very sensitive and big surface area pad feet that are really sensitive to vibrations on the sound. I think they can sort of communicate through sort of low frequency rumbles that kind of vibrate the ground so that they can kind of communicate across the herd sort of silently that way. I don't know too much about that, but it is interesting. Forever, I would like to comment a few things. The thing is that if you are talking about the communication all the microorganisms are very much communicative, I will say. If you look forward to any type of microscopic organism too they are quite communicative with each other. For example, if we take about the consideration of any type of bacteria they usually communicate with each other too. It has been found. The thing is that it all depends upon the chemistry and the need for food, towards which all the microorganisms are going towards. And I think it is also possible that life can exist without the important materials that are present in our earth like water and oxygen. It can also exist without that. For example, if we see any type of anaerobic reaction many types of microorganisms can stay over there and even some microorganisms can live in the microgravity too. Yes, and I am also reminded of the exotic life forms that we find in thermal vents in the deep ocean. I think it was the discovery of these life forms, these extremophiles that really rejuvenated this whole discussion. As we discovered, there are extremophiles in the thermal vents that do not use oxygen at all. They metabolize sulfur. They do not need any sunlight, which is remarkable. I will derail the conversation just a little bit here. We are talking about communication and we are talking about intelligence. Let us talk about elephants now. You mentioned elephants before. The thing about elephants is that what they found when they studied elephants was that if you say the word elephant, if you say the word elephant, they do not react if you say it in English. If you are a female and you say it in the local language of the people there, there is no reaction. But if you are a young man and you say elephant in the local language, the elephants panic because they have been hunted by those men in the past they can understand human languages. I might point out real quick just what I put in text is we are talking about communications that are very local. The only way to do that would be kind of on a planet. On site. On site with the medium that we use or possibly very slow, like we do have particles that have come from Mars to Earth that have found in Antarctica, that sort of stuff. The only way to get beyond that, I think at least, is electromagnetic radiation. What we may be talking about is there could be a lot of intelligent life. There could be all kinds of communicative life but just not that many that play with them. Or neutrinos if they are able to harness those but those are slow also because they are particles. In other words, unless you harness electromagnetic radiation which encompasses radio waves and etc. then maybe there just isn't a lot of interstellar communication. Well, I think that's an outstanding point. It makes me think that really the most obvious explanation for the Fermi Paradox is the sheer size of space that everything is so far away and that light is so slow. Compared to the size of space, light is bug-ish. It's like moving through molasses. That is probably the most obvious reason is that everyone is just too... Yeah, that's one argument I've heard but it doesn't really hold water if you consider advanced civilizations. If they have been around for millions of years the speed of light is not a problem. They can colonize the entire galaxy moving at sub-light speeds. Oh, that's a good point. In a video that given enough time and a high enough technology you would be able to just populate every inhabitable planet. Yeah, the type 3 civilizations that were mentioned as the Kardashev Scale in the video. So there, that's where the real question should be. In other words, why have we not seen evidence of any life that, in other words, if life could do that, why haven't we seen any evidence? That's really where the question should be. Yes, it's, you know, the deep time sort of negates deep space. They sort of cancel each other out so that if you have enough time the distances become less important. Presuming that the civilization could survive long enough to take advantage of deep time. One problem with the Fermi Paradox is, or I guess you could look at it as a problem, it's an underlying assumption, let's say, is that there are civilizations that are much older than ours and much more advanced than ours. Maybe that's not the case. Maybe it takes a long time to produce an intelligent civilization. So there aren't that many out there and they're not more advanced than we are. Or at least in our area, in other words, within a few million light years or something, maybe we really are special in that way that our video brought that up. All right. Right. I would like to say something. Go ahead. If we consider our science and technology we have still, yet till now we have not crossed our solar system. The first important thing that I would like to put forward as a note. Second thing is that the interference of all the communications that are coming out from the space. There are lots of signals that we are getting, we are receiving and there are many receiving point in our art and we are studying all those things. But what about the interference that are happening? And secondly, we are not yet till now we are not scientifically not well advanced enough to focus on something that, yes, there is an art-like planet but we cannot focus inside it like a telescope that yes, we can see the land and we can see if some creatures are crawling over there. It's not possible yet till now we have not advanced in such a way that we can do we can say that, yes we have proof or we can prove it that there are some living forms in certain levels. Well, I certainly have something to say to that. First of all, yes, we have across the solar system, not as human beings but as probes that have been sent across the solar system and no, we cannot resolve a planet, we cannot resolve the features on an exoplanet currently. All you need is a telescope, a telescope in space for example, a telescope where you could do that. A telescope I don't think will be big enough to actually do what you're suggesting but this is only a matter of time. We can actually do that eventually. That's interesting. Excuse me. The thing is that we have already NASA has sent already many satellites and they have tried to track out the main intention was to track out the other living forms but the important thing behind it is all the satellites are near to failure because of the lack of energy. They are not getting enough amount of solar energy so that all the instruments that are onboard over there can be used properly. So it's a big problem for us. Well, that's not the limiting factor for finding to actually image an exoplanet. To image an exoplanet, all you need is a really big telescope which can be built. It's not a question of energy but it's the question of size of the telescope. Aren't there proposals to concepts to create a gigantic radio telescope for example with one end sort of being on the other side of the sun essentially sort of a solar system sized telescope. You could just put the dishes just incredibly far apart in space and create a gigantic telescope. Yes, you're talking about an interferometer. You can use interferometers to get high resolution. The problem with interferometers is that they don't fill all the space between so you don't have the sensitivity of the large telescope. You do have the resolution but you don't have the sensitivity. I think the argument that we're using kind of comes down to the radio waves thing in other words or any electromagnetic waves is that we we know that somebody can have visited us if they've been around for a billion years or whatever just because of the type three argument but in other words how come unless we just start looking in the right spectrum or whatever, how come we don't see any intelligence communications going on? That's my biggest question. Well, what do you think? I mean is it as you mentioned I think even early in your opening statement is it just we have such a small sample size, we just have to sort of brute force our way through it over maybe generations of just searching across all, you know, a bigger and bigger sample size? Well, like I said, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, if there's a civilization like ours, the only way we're going to know there is actually beam radiation towards us. The big question then is if the civilization is much more advanced than ours, then why don't we know they're there because there would be small signs of it, but I'm suggesting that maybe there aren't advanced civilizations out there. Well, certainly the longer it goes of not seeing them, in other words radio waves considering like an argument earlier that radio waves were kind of stumbled on and probably everybody would stumble on them is lowers the probability at least in our area of there being an advanced civilization that uses radio waves. I mean, you could that's the argument there. Vic is another way we could possibly detect life although not communicate with it even to do it with our existing technologies. I think one of the ways they try to do it on exoplanets is to look for signs of pollution for example in the atmosphere of the planet and the constituents of the atmospheric planet and that that might be an indication of life and by pollution I guess I mean not just the byproducts of industry, but even just the byproducts of life that might consider that oxygen is a huge pollutant. I mean that's you know that that's the biggest detection in other words if I were to look at a planet and I detected a lot of oxygen I would say oh my goodness they're very similar to Earth. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. So I think that is one of the strategies that they use. Well, speaking of strategies if you're to find life on another planet there is an indirect way to do this I think this was done with the Galileo space probe Carl Sagan had this great idea that the space probe in order to get it out to Jupiter we used gravity assist and they had to bring it by the planet Earth. He said let's aim it at Earth and see if we can detect any signs of life on Earth. Fascinating. And he said you know there's an unusual mix of gases, oxygen and nitrogen which is an unusual mix of gases so which suggests that there could be life on that planet but the idea is that for exoplanets if you look at an exoplanet when it transits a star you can look at the atmosphere in and look for specific absorption lines and if you see the red absorption lines that will tell you the composition of that atmosphere for example it has oxygen then you have an indication that there might be life on that planet. Another thing you can do is see if those spectral lines change over time and that's something that weather you'd be able to observe the weather on an exoplanet. Yeah, fascinating. And those are things we can do now with just our existing technology basically. That's right. I'm just hoping that in my lifetime that okay this is just pure ego but in my lifetime I'd love to find at least some life outside of the Earth. I mean Mars whatever and I don't care if it's a virus in other words that says that we're not alone. I bet my life that there is other life but I'd love to find it before I die. I'm kind of pessimistic my sort of view is that we are for all practical intents and purposes alone. There's no one out there for us to talk to if there is intelligent life out there but I also agree with you Vic that the discovery of any form of life off of Earth any indigenous life off of Earth would be extremely comforting. Sorry go ahead. I'm just going to say it's possible you'll find life on Mars and there may be bacteria on Mars that haven't been found yet. It hasn't been ruled out but I don't know do you think they'll really find life on Mars? It's possible because they found some surface water. Yes they did they found lakes of it big long kilometer long water in other words not unfrozen by the poles I mean anywhere there's water is where you want to look at least for life like this what would be spectacular would be either way in other words if you found something that was similar to life on Earth in other words similar DNA or if you found maybe something that was similar that had a slight tweak in the DNA or something totally different I mean any of those would be just outstanding discoveries. You know we could I mean it wouldn't even have to be DNA if we could find something that was related somehow. Some kind of a polymer that self replicates or something that virus. Right something that's able to also something that's able to utilize energy in its environment you know. But Vick makes a very good point we don't even have to find intelligent life to begin with what we want to find is any kind of life outside the Earth if we can do that that would be amazing. I'm sorry go ahead. I would like to put some point that as far as I have heard that there are some Earth like planets which have been explored out and there are possibility that the environment and the atmosphere is quite similar with Earth. But the question is let us guess that it is just only one light here I'm to say distant from us how we will go because if we have to take out the whole human civilization and make a space travel it will take us about one light here it is a big thing so many generations and what will happen when we are traveling in the space these are the big questions in front of us. Yeah you are talking about maybe sort of multi-generational base craft which I think is it Yes the most important thing is when we are going to the space we are exposed to so much radiations that we have to protect out means we have to build our spaceship in such a way that we can protect ourselves the most important thing that in the microgravity is our bones the bone density decreases a lot that is one of the big problem Yeah there is a lot of challenges SR brings up a very good point this is a little bit off topic but it is nonetheless interesting is how would we visit other stars the microgravity problem will not be a real problem because the ships will be spinning so you will have a centripetal effect which will simulate gravity if you are going to travel for generations you want to have gravity The famous treadmill running scene in 2001 Space Odyssey Well in that particular case they actually had part of the spacecraft was rotating so they were able to run around inside it Right because if you have a big generational spaceship which you would need if there is no such thing as FTL travel faster than light then you will need to travel for decades to visit even the nearest stars and you will have to have proper spaceships shielding from radiation as SR mentions and you will also have to have some means of artificial gravity but it can be done there is nothing fundamental that can prevent us Yes then you have to rotate the spacecraft like the earth at that same speed so that you can generate the centripetal and centrifugal force What you are is the rate of rotation is determined by the size the radius it is basically v squared over r the rotation of the gravity Would relativistic effects become a challenge? Sorry Bergen I am sorry to interrupt Sizi asking would relativistic effects become an issue as you I am assuming for example if you are using some kind of a solar sail or something that you are accelerating over time sort of increasingly approaching the speed of light or very very high speeds so do relativistic effects become a challenge like the slowing down of time It depends on your propulsion if you can accelerate long enough that you get close to the speed of light then it would seem like you are passing a number of light years in only a few months for example but as far as current technology is concerned I am not sure how fast we can get up to maybe Vic has a better idea of that but it would be something like 0.2 or 0.3 of the speed of light maybe that wouldn't have a very strong relativistic effect So we are getting close to our time and I wanted to give maybe Shantal an opportunity to make any announcements she might have maybe in a nearby chat and why don't maybe a good way to sort of finish up is everyone take a turn maybe with some brief closing remarks so Vic why don't you start with maybe just a minute or two oh sure okay this will be just a brief but first of all you have to step back and say how wonderful it is that our species has got to the point where we even think about something beyond ourselves it may not seem that way every day but that we can think about other civilizations and out there and be willing to try to contact them without wanting to eat them or whatever I just applaud the whole idea and perhaps there are other aliens out there with similar ideas I think the paranoid thing about we shouldn't go out there because they're going to eat us is kind of just I don't know it's anthropomorphic it's the sign of the times I'd love to find other aliens and learn what they're like absolutely Sizzigie, thank you Vic yeah from what I've seen of the what I've learned of the Fermi Paradox I think I know the reason but I mean of course I'm just guessing I mean there is not enough data to really answer the question but I'm just going to take a guess and my guess is that there are civilizations out there that are not much more advanced than ours and there aren't that many of them that's my guess alright very good and SR do you have any brief closing comments well I'd like to say that Sizzigie has said the most important thing that yet till now I don't think that there are no advanced civilization like us otherwise we would have been able to contact with them and I hope that one day like Vic has said in his lifetime he wants to see like that and I also in my lifetime also want to see the same thing that we have been able to discover something which will be fascinating for our whole human society fantastic well thank you very much please give a round of applause to our panel members to thank them for their participation I think my closing thought is that I think it's cool that we can all gather here together and talk about this problem because in this you know for all we know we are the only conscious life in the universe and here we are reflecting on the nature of the universe and in a sense we are the consciousness of the universe we make the universe awake and we are demonstrating that here tonight so thanks very much everyone for participating and have a great weekend and boomer soon or beat Baylor thank you all and thanks to our moderator and to Science Circle in general for hosting this