StarTalk Radio - UFOs and Possible Aliens, with Seth Shostak – StarTalk All-Stars

Episode Date: November 1, 2016

Seth Shostak, SETI Institute Senior Astronomer, discovers what it’s like to host StarTalk All-Stars when he welcomes skeptic Ben Radford and new comic co-host Ray Ellin to discuss UFOs, aliens, government cover-ups, Roswell, and space-faring dinosaurs.NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/ Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

This is StarTalk. Hello and welcome to StarTalk All-Stars. I'm Seth Shostak and your All-Star host. I'm Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute. S-E-T-I, almost my name, a coincidence. SETI is an acronym for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. And if you ever saw the movie Contact, you know what I do for a living. My day job is to try and find cosmic company that's at least as smart as your cousin

by using big antennas to try and eavesdrop on signals. Today we're going to talk about unidentified flying objects. Joining me in the studio is co-host comedian Ray Allen. Ray. Hello, Seth. Yeah. Hello, universe. Are you an alien, Ray? It'd be job security for me. And we also have Skyping in a real expert on this stuff. It's Ben Radford,

and he's the deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer, and he's a research fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Ben is the go-to guy, so that's why we're going to him, the go-to guy for all things unexplained and paranormal. We're glad to have him on. Ben, it's a real pleasure to see you and to hear from you. Thanks, Seth. Always great to talk to you. I always have a fine time talking science-y and skeptically and space-y things with you. Great. Okay, look, why don't we just cut to the chase here,

because people want to know what happened in Roswell, New Mexico. Since you're in New Mexico now, you're not that far from Roswell. It's just a little cow town, I mean, at the edges of the Great Plains. Nobody would ever have heard about it, except for what happened in the summer of 1947. What purportedly happened there? Well, it's a long, somewhat complicated story. I'll try to keep it concise. And I have been there before. I've been to the Roswell every year. Of course, they have an annual festival because why wouldn't you? And so you can go there and you can see where, according to some people, the crash occurred. Basically, what happened was that a rancher saw some debris in a field outside of Roswell,

and it later came to the attention of a local sheriff, who then called the local press, and then it sort of turned into this whole big thing. And this led to the story that, well, the initial story was the famous headline, you know, saucer crash in Roswell. This was actually a mistake. And of course, this has been latched on to by conspiracy theorists who say, well, look, you know, they admitted it at first, now they're backtracking. At the end of the day, what actually happened was that there was a project, Mogul, which is a topret project that was designed to listen in for Russian nuclear explosions, for example, from great heights. Well, wait a minute here, Ben. I'm going to back up just for a moment because I want to get this straight.

So it's something – I just want to get the storyline here. It's the summer of 1947. It's the summer of 1947. The Roswell Daily Record, which was the newspaper at the time, it may still be, has this big headline in font you could read from low-flying aircraft that said saucer flying disc. They didn't call them flying saucers at that point, I don't think. Anyhow, whatever. Right. Crashed near Roswell, right?

That's right. And, you know, people think, oh, well, because they'd been hearing about these things, right? I mean, this was not the first time somebody thought they saw something from another world buzzing the skies. It was not the first time. No. Ah, that I didn't know. I thought this was the first one and they ran with it. No, no, no, no. This has had great marketing, right?

So, I mean, they had heard of it. Am I right, Ben? Yeah, yeah. What's interesting is that what sometimes people forget is that the Roswell crash, and there was in fact Roswell crash, it just wasn't aliens. This happened shortly after the famous Kenneth Arnold sighting, which basically put the term flying sauc much in the public consciousness. And so that's one reason why when people found this debris, which, by the way, the later stories of finding bodies and all these sorts of craft and things from extraterrestrial craft, that would be used in, for example, a balloon. So if you go back to the very first eyewitnesses, none of them had any of the more dramatic, sensational claims about bodies and all these other things. That really sort of latched onto the Roswell myth decades later. Okay. But the second day, the day after that big headline, there was another big headline in the Roswell Daily Record, and they changed the story. They said the military says, look,

this was not a flying disc. This was a weather balloon. That was a little bit disingenuous of them, wasn't it? It was. It was. And again, this is basically a series of mistakes that has been latched onto by the conspiracy theorists to sort of suggest, well, clearly there's some cover-up going on. No, in fact, this may come as a surprise to the audience, sometimes our government is incompetent. Are you shocked, Ray? You look shocked. I can't believe what Ben's saying. Can't believe what Ben's saying. I know. I can't believe what you're saying. Okay.

Dr. Wilde here. But, no, so basically, I mean, you know, you raise a good question, and I've heard this oftentimes before, and the answer is that when the Air Force was originally asked, the person they asked, he did believe it was a weather balloon. I mean, he wasn't lying. That's what he thought it was. He hadn't seen it firsthand. Because the thing is that Project Mogul was it was a top secret project. And so the locals at the local Air Force base weren't in on it. And so when when the when the weather balloon explanation came down, that was that I don't think it was taken terribly seriously locally. The citizenry of Roswell didn't go nuts about this thing. How did this become the poster child for all the UFO encounters? Well, it's fascinating because essentially the Roswell incident, the whole story went dormant for decades.

went dormant for decades. Between 1947 and, say, really the 70s and 80s, nobody thought anything of it. There was no such a thing. It was like, remember that thing that crashed? Oh, yeah, no big deal. And it wasn't until the 1980s when you had books coming out that were sort of reviving the Roswell story. And so people would, there was books, you know, by Philip Corso and others that would sort of, and Berlitz as well, who would basically revise the Roswell story. And they would go and interview people who decades earlier would say, yeah, I was there. And then basically it was a, it's a really fascinating case of basically folklore in the making where, where again, if you do the investigation in the original research, you find out there's really not much to it. But so the Roswell story, in my mind,

is very much a folkloric story. It's a story of how an idea, a kernel of a real event, again, something did crash outside of Roswell, but it wasn't all the other things that have become associated with it, certainly in the last 20 years. Okay, well, look, I mean, if you're sitting next to somebody at Denny's for lunch and they find out that you know something, well, he goes to the best, right? Just love a good Denny's lunch. And if somebody's asking you about this, I mean, a large fraction of the public actually believes that aliens came, who knows how many hundreds of light years, to visit the land of

enchantment to visit new mexico i'm not quite sure why maybe it was the tex-mex cuisine i don't know why they come to new mexico but but they were coming to new mexico and they've come all this way trillions of miles and then the last 50 feet they make a navigation error and crash into the dirt okay so what what do you tell them i mean you, you say, well, that's right. They did that. Yeah, it really depends on how sober the person next to me is. If it's Denny's, really, it could go either way. Certainly out here in New Mexico. You know, the thing is, you know, if the person I'm talking to seems like they're genuinely curious about it, and, of course, certainly here in New Mexico and across the country and around the world. In fact, of course, that's what Roswell is known for. I mean, with all due respect to Roswell Tourism Board,

that's pretty much the only reason to go there. It's a nice enough town, but that's, of course, what made their name. And so people all over the world know about it and they sort of hear bits and pieces about it. And of course, most of the time they're informed or misinformed by these sensational stories and stuff. And so I try to engage my audience, right? So if it's somebody who seems genuinely open to hearing what actually happened, I'll tell them the story because I know it, I've written about it

and this and that. But sometimes I'll just basically say, I'll do what you just did, which is say, all right, well, let's think about this for a second. You know, how is it that these aliens managed to come all the way across the galaxy and all the way into our little solar system?

And, again, in the last 50 feet, suddenly they have – one of the stories is that lightning hit it. I'm like, really? The aliens, they managed to make it through the vast expanses of space, but lightning did it in? And it's the same thing I use when I talk to people about, for example, people who think that the crop circles are actually sort of alien graffiti. I said, does this make sense to you? I mean, instead of sending radio signals, which SETI might be a good idea to do, that no, no, no, we're not going to send radio signals. That's too easy. No, we're going to come all the way over here so we can locate some fields of wheat

and make circles. Yeah. It doesn't sound terribly reasonable. Well, maybe the aliens just have a very low IQ and they want to go to Roswell and make some crop circles. And it's like it's intergalactic finger painting for them. Yeah. It's hard to make crop circles in Roswell, I suspect. Well, we've got to go on to the cosmic queries.

We'll be coming back to you, Ben, because I want to get to the bottom of Roswell, what really happened there. And you alluded to that earlier, but I'd like to get your quick summary on that. But also to the whole phenomenon of UFOs, because one-third of the American public thinks that, indeed, some of these unidentified flying objects in the sky are actually alien visitors. It's not 1%. It's like a third. 33%. It sky are actually alien visitors. It's not 1%. It's like a third. 33%. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of people.

So, you know, what's going on there? A few. Yeah. It's a lot. Maybe it's a big conspiracy. And really, what I'd like to find out this episode is, is what are the address of the Denny's in Roswell? If Ben could let me know, I'd love to find out. A Denny's or IHOP in Roswell, because I'd love to take a road trip.

Yeah, we'll meet up. I'll send it to you. Perfect. Thanks, man. Admirable expectations, Ray. Okay, let's go to these cosmic queries. All right, yes. Amanda Clark writes and says, If the government did have contact, why would they not share it with us? I know it starts from a conspiracy theory place,

but I just wonder if there would be any logical reason to keep the info from us. Good question. Yeah. Is the government hiding? Go ahead, Ben, tell me. I mean, if you can, I mean, maybe I'm not clear to hear this. Are they listening? I don't know. Yeah. Look, I mean, this is a perfect question. And, you know, I've pointed this out to people before, you know, I've asked people like question. And, you know, I've pointed this out to people before. You know, I've asked people, like, why exactly, you know, for the conspiracy theorists, why is it that you think that people would be, the government would make all this? And not just one government, of course. We're talking an international consortium spanning many administrations and countries and decades to all suppress this evidence.

And it just doesn't make sense. And people say, well, you know, it's because, you know, if people really thought that aliens were contacting us, then, you know, then it would be there would be mass panic. And, of course, the reply to that is, but if you look at polls, many people already think that aliens have contacted us. So that has not happened. So that explanation, well, there will be mass panic. No, no, no, no.

A lot of you, as you said, depending on what poll you look at, between a quarter and a third of them already think that. So that clearly hasn't happened. They don't have an answer. They're still going to work every day. Yeah, but couldn't you make the argument just because somebody might think that it happened is very different from being presented with hard evidence? That could create the fear. Like some people think Trump will be a great president. If he becomes president, they might be like, holy shit, what do we do?

Yeah. You know? Yeah, well, there may be something to that. I mean, Ben, it's okay to say, well, I believe that it's true. But if the government were to come out tomorrow, and after all, I mean, Hillary said something on a late night talk show about this, that she was going to get to the bottom of this. I must confess, I don't understand that. Because if the government powers that be who can get to the bottom of it, presumably, say, well, yes, we've actually been, we have the aliens freeze-dried and stacked up at Area 51. If they say that, everybody would go nonlinear.

But if they say, no, we don't have any evidence of alien visitation, everybody would say that's a – they're lying to us. I don't see how it solves anything. But supposedly they did do it. I mean, do you think that people would be rioting in the streets? We're not going to work today. We're going to riot in the streets because they've got aliens. No, this is absurd. I mean, again, the government is in a no-win situation because the thing is that even if the government came totally clean tomorrow and declassified everything and said, look, here's what's going on at Area 51, here's Air Force bases, the fact is that the conspiracy theorists wouldn't believe them.

They would assume there's another layer of the cover-up. And this is inherent, of course, in conspiracy theory thinking is that there's no way to disprove it because anything you offer them as counter evidence is taken as part of the conspiracy. You're part of the cover up, Ben. Yeah. There's no way to argue with these people because it's like, well, anything you say. So, you know, and again, that's one of the problems is that, you know, when from the government point of view, no matter what they say, people aren't going to believe it. So, you know, let let them wonder what's at Area 51. Who cares?

Yeah, they don't seem to care at Area 51. They really don't? Yeah. All right. Jake Goodwin writes, what reason would an alien race powerful and intelligent enough to easily traverse the universe to make it to Earth possibly have for coming here in the first place? Yeah. make it to Earth, possibly have for coming here in the first place? Yeah, well, I might take that one because, in fact, there have been panels,

there have been serious discussion about what it is that we have here on planet Earth that might attract the interest of aliens. And the answer is not much. I mean, it's certainly, I know that this may offend you. Candy crush? What are you talking about? Yeah, well, maybe that's it. I mean, none of the raw materials, the water, you know, the minerals, precious metals, all that stuff. They've got all that wherever they are. And that's easy to show.

So they're not going to come here just for that, right? Remember Avatar? They went for the unobtainium. But they actually tell you how fast their rockets are. I worked it out. Buying a pound of unobtainium and having it shipped back from that planet with all the blue people, that would be like ordering a book from

Amazon paying $30,000 for the shipping you probably won't do it okay so they're not coming here for that right the only thing we've got I mean obviously

they may come to study the biology or it's the culture our rock and roll is probably different from their rock and roll that's the only thing

we got oh what if on their planet they ran out of materials and they're coming here to get our... It's hard to run out of materials. The universe has a lot of stuff. If we run out of materials

and, you know, we will. We're running out of all sorts of things like copper. People are going to break into your house. Not for that big screen TV I know you have, Ray, but for the copper pipes in the wall. But you can get that from, you know, just mine the asteroids or somebody, some other planet. Just take Mars apart or Venus, better Venus. Venus isn't such a great place.

I've been hoarding copper in my basement. Have you been doing that? Yeah, there are a lot of people in New York who do that. Well, let me just add that, you know, one of the conspiracies, of course, about aliens is cattle mutilations. And the idea is that when you find these mutilated cattle here and there and in the Southwest primarily, that it's because aliens have come down and snipped out the soft parts of cattle, including cow anuses. So my question is, you know, on what planet are cow anuses so fascinating and so rare that they need to come all the way over here to analyze them? And I just don't get it.

This planet has very, very fascinating cow anuses. Let's be very clear about that, Ben. Okay, fair enough. You're the expert. I will defer to your expertise on cow ani. Yes, I am the expert in the cow anus field. No buts about it. We have time for another question here.

All right. This is from Kelia Silvis, a patron. She's a scientist from Minnesota. In Star Trek Voyager's distant origin, the crew of the Voyager discovers descendants of Earth dinosaurs who developed the space program and escaped Earth before the Chicxulub asteroid hit. Chicxulub, yeah. Chicxulub, yes. Pretending for a moment that dinosaurs actually were capable of interstellar travel,

would any evidence of their space program still exist? Dinosaur space program. All right, we got a little bit of time, but not much. Ben, do you want to weigh in on the dinosaur space program still exist. Dinosaur space program. All right, we got a little bit of time, but not much. Ben, do you want to weigh in on the dinosaur space program or is that too short an answer? Yeah, I don't. Wow. You know, I really got nothing on this one.

I'm going to throw them back to you, Seth. Okay, well, thanks. Look, the thing about dinosaurs is that they weren't very good at picking up pliers and things like that that you might need to build a rocket to go anywhere, right? Yeah, they kind of walk around. They have these small little hands. There's no evidence for the dinosaurs even developing science which you need before the technology. All right, we've got to take a short break here, but don't go too far.

We'll be right back here with UFOs and possible aliens on StarTalk All-Stars. and possible aliens on StarTalk All-Stars. Welcome back to StarTalk All-Stars UFO Edition. I'm your host for today, Seth Shostak. And we have professional comedian Ray Allen. Hey, I am a pro. All right. Joining us as co-host today and Skyping into the studio,

we have Ben Radford, Ben's deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer, and he's helping us delve into the topic of UFOs. You know, one thing, Ben, before we get started here on these cosmic queries again, we were talking about Roswell. And, of course, we all know the story that some people believe that the aliens indeed crashed outside of Roswell and the government kept it all under wraps. What do you think is the correct explanation for what happened to Roswell? Well, it's sort of a convoluted story, but essentially what happened was that, again, there was this debris that was found, basically sticks and basically tinfoil and light, things like that, that later became, through later iterations and legends and lore, these crashed bodies and this and that.

iterations and legends and lore, these crashed bodies and this and that. So the original eyewitnesses said that it was just simply, you know, the things that you would find in a weather balloon or in a loft project. So what happened was that it was, in fact, the first people that, when the Air Force said that it was a flying saucer, that was, of course, a mistake. Then they said, well, no, it's a weather balloon. But in fact, it was not a weather balloon. That's what the person that said it thought at the time from the local Air Force base. It was, in fact, a top secret project called Project Mogul, which was intended to basically spy and listen for Soviet tests, Russian tests. for Soviet tests, Russian tests. And so what happened was that eventually in 1994, the Air Force released information about Project Mogul, because again, it was secret during the Cold War. And they said, look, this is actually what happened. And if you go back and look at the

timeline, it fits perfectly because Project Mogul was released about 10 days before the wreckage was found on this ranch outside of Roswell. So when you look at the timeline of what actually happened, it all fits nicely. It's only when you start including these sensational stories of alien bodies and these, you know, many dubious eyewitnesses that come forth decades later that things get complicated. All right. So it was a top secret government project to find out if the Soviets had the bomb. I mean, that's what it was about, right? Essentially, yeah. Alright, now you know. Now I know.

Want to do some queries? Let's do some queries. Okay. Seth and Ben, this is from Michael Wojtas. Are there any theories considering alien presence on Earth that you find particularly entertaining, amusing, or maybe interesting?

Yeah. I have to say, personally, I get called every day. I'm sure Ben gets more calls than I do. But I get called every day by people who claim that they have some evidence, by the way. And they're all – I wouldn't say they're all amusing. They're all interesting, and I respond to them all. But, Ben, you're the expert. Are there any that you find particularly exceptional in

these ways? Yes, I would say probably the, you know, on one level, you know, these conspiracy theories about alien crashes, on one level, they're kind of all the same, sort of the same stuff recycled over and over again, if you look at the lore of UFO crashes and that. But probably the most interesting and amusing one is the one about the supposed base, underground base under Dulce, New Mexico, which is my home state in the northern part. And the story goes that underneath this mountain range near the Colorado border, there is this top secret government base that, and there's all these different levels. And so allegedly there's been these alien wars going on, and there's these incredibly fantastic conspiracies about all the stories going on. There's like seven different levels. On one level, they're making Bigfoot and chupacabras. On another level, they're having wars out of Star Wars. It's just fascinating.

And of course, there's no evidence that the base exists at all. And yet, it's just people will just go on and on about these crazy stories under Dulce. Well, is it helping the New Mexico economy in any sense? I mean, all this manufacturing going on there in northern New Mexico. going on there in northern New Mexico. It is. And it's helping the local economy because last year there was actually a UFO conference at Dulce. And they brought in speakers. I thought about going, but I was busy. Because I would have loved to say, so I'm here, where's the evidence? Yeah, yeah. Where's the evidence? But I would not have been welcome. But, yes, it does bring in some money for the local economy. And, of course, that's one of the reasons that a lot of these UFO stories are perpetuated. It happened in Aztec New Mexico.

It happened in Roswell, of course. There's a financial incentive to perpetuate these stories. All right. I want to get to more questions. But, you know, you prompt me to ask this because I thought about it. I mean, if we're being visited by extraterrestrials, there couldn't be a bigger story than that. I mean, that would be an incredibly interesting thing. But I have to say, if we are being visited, I mean, just let's assume we are being visited just for a moment.

You've got to say these are the best house guests ever, right? Because they don't kill anybody. They don't solve any of our problems. When I go down to the airport, they never tell me as we're sitting on the tarmac, sorry, folks, this plane is going to be delayed for 30 minutes because there are unidentified aircraft in the area and we can't take off. Nothing. They don't do anything except improve the financial prospects of towns in New Mexico. And occasionally, you know, apparently take the soft parts out of dead cattle. Oh, well, there is that.

That's right. Butchers. That's right. The Denny butchers. That's right. The Denny's in New Mexico has never been busier. This is a good follow-up question from Will Burke. Of all the strange hoaxes, which one do you think to be the most well-thought-out and believable, even if it's clearly false? Ben.

Ben? Well-thought-out. That's an interesting question. I mean, there's so many hoaxes and UFOs. The part that's tripping up is the well thought out part. There's all sorts. I mean, I can name you a dozen. There's the MJ-12 documents. There's the alien mummies. alien mummies. Probably, in terms of the most elaborate, instead of well thought out, I'll probably go for the Roswell dummy story that happened in the 1990s when, of course, there was that video footage, well, film apparently, of the alien autopsy. This was later sold, if I'm not mistaken, to Guccione of Penthouse Magazine, who paid, I don't know, $2 million for it. Hope he kept his receipt.

Later turned out, of course, to be faked. But it was, you know, for a while it was a Fox special. So there you go. So that was probably, in terms of the most interesting, elaborate hoax, is probably the alien autopsy. That is why I got my Penthouse subscription, for that story. That's why. Yeah. I believe you, Ray.

Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Okay, let's go to another question. Here's a fun question from Marcus Sparza. What one song would you choose to play to aliens introducing them to Earth? Yeah. song would you choose to play to aliens introducing them to Earth? Yeah. You know, that's an interesting question because it presupposes that the aliens, A, can hear, and B, have music.

Right. And, you know, I've occasionally been asked, if we could get in touch with the aliens, what questions would I ask them? And the only two questions that come to mind readily, one is, do you have religion? The other one is, do you have music? And if they're on a planet with an atmosphere, if they're biological, they might very well have music because they will have ears. Ears are great if you're living in a forest because you can hear danger that you can't see. So it's a good thing to have hearing. What if they don't have ears? What if everything is telepathic? Yeah, how does that work there, Ray? I don't know. All right. Well, yeah, Seth, what if they're telepathic? Yeah.

Okay. I mean, if they're telepathic, why aren't they communicating with me now? I mean, I could get a raise for that. Because we have no telepathic powers. Yes, that's right. That's right. Well, you know, there is something called physics, but let's not even worry about all that. I think that the most amazing thing that could happen to an alien if they came to New Mexico again is to land at a disco on a Saturday night, but that they didn't have hearing. Right.

And they just see all these creatures, you know, sort of gyrating around. They don't hear anything. And they just they figure, OK, it's some sort of religious practice. Right. I don't know. I think we should play in some Taylor Swift. That's what they greet them with. With Taylor Swift or Anne Murray.

We have sent music to the heaven. NASA in 2008 actually sent a Beatles song to the North Star. Is that right? Yeah, they haven't replied yet, but it hasn't gotten to them yet either. Which song was it, do you know? Across the Universe. Yes, yes, in fact. Appropriate.

Did you know that, Ben? I did not know that. Yeah, well, they haven't responded yet, but that star is 400 light years away, so it'll take a while. Hmm. Okay. Lay it on us, Ray. All right. Let's go with that.

This is from Dave Crozier. Why do the aliens who appear to have vastly superior technology only seem to abduct people from the low end of the gene pool? That's not very kind. It's not nice, but Dave is... It's a legitimate inquiry from Dave. Yeah, they never take diplomats or scientists. Never. It's never a PhD candidate.

Never, no. It would be good if they took guys with cameras. Ben, is there a reason for this? Well, I can think of a few. They're not polite. I think probably the best answer is that it fuels the whole conspiracy theory. Because again, as you know, part of the idea behind the conspiracies, particularly with UFOs, is there's this aggression against

egghead scientists, with all due respect. It's the idea that, you know, it's the common people. It's like, you know, the government elites, the scientists, the officials, they have a lockdown on this technology and, you know, and they're going to, this is part of the idea behind the men in black, right? It's the idea that the men in black serve as an enforcer to sort of keep the common folk, you know, from, you know, from sharing their stories and this and that. Obviously, the men in black are failing miserably because everyone knows about them. But anyway, so I think that the reason that the alien abductors, the aliens would abduct people from that strata is precisely because it feeds the mythology, the folk, the UFO, uh, alien mythology. Um, you know, if, if the aliens abducted, uh, Hillary Clinton or, uh, or another, you know,

another world leader, uh, then number one, their presence would be immediately known. It wouldn't be sort of, you know, Oh, this happened to me, you know, in the backwoods of Louisiana in 74, it happened, you know, in white White House in 2016. So, that'd be my answer, is that that particular motif is embedded in UFO folklore and alien mythology. I got to say that that actually aligns pretty well with something that I've often wondered about. And that is why the whole UFO discussion, the whole issue there, it is so emotion-laden. I mean, if you say, no no i don't think that aliens really crashed or something like that and people get really exercised about that right they really do

and i kind of wonder why is it so emotional i mean you know either there's good evidence or there isn't good evidence but it becomes emotional and i think that part of that is because here's a case where somebody who maybe doesn't have advanced degrees in science, I mean, that sort of stuff, that they know something that's really important that those nerdy, pointy-headed, jacket-wearing academics down at the local university don't know. And it's empowering. I think there's something to that. Maybe it also could be that maybe it just gives them a hope, a belief in a higher power, and maybe they like the thought of that. People like the idea that people, well, that beings, more powerful than they are, are interested in their well-being.

I mean, interested enough to haul them out of their bedrooms and use them for unauthorized experiments, as some people think is happening, right? We like that, because when we were kids, there were such all-powerful beings that had some control over your life. They were called your mom and dad. They were called your parents, right? Yeah, exactly. All right, let's exactly. All right.

Let's hit it over here. Corey Chapman writes, I'm curious, Seth, what are the protocols for if or when you guys find what looks like a legitimate SETI signal? Do you go straight to the press? Do you call the president first? Do you open champagne? What do you do? Yeah, well, I get this question a lot.

And in fact, there are some protocols. But all they say is check out the signal, tell everybody, and don't broadcast anything back until you've, you know, cleared that with the population of the earth. I don't know how you do that. It just says international consultation. And to me, that could be the Swedish chess team. I don't know. But in fact, the realities of the situation mitigate against all of that. What actually happens, and when I say that, I'm not just theorizing. I'm not trying to shine you on. When I say what actually happens, we've had at least three that I can think of, incidents where we thought maybe this is a real signal, right? So you can see what happens.

And what happens is that there's no secrecy in the SETI community, so everybody knows, and immediately the media start calling up. That's what actually happens. So it's a big, big story before you've had even the slightest chance to verify that the signal is really something extraterrestrial. So it'll be just this huge media response. And by the way, the responsible media will be the last to run the story. They want confirmation. But you'll read about it in the checkout line long before you see it in the New York Times. If I was standing next to you, I'd go right on Snapchat. Yeah, there you go.

See? I would tweet. I would Instagram it. People think the men in black would show up. You know, that'd be interesting. At least that means there's budget for that. No, but you put it on social media. It's just like, you know, should we reply to aliens?

Like and share if the answer's yes. Right. Yeah. That's actually, that's a pretty good idea. I think we ought to do that. Right. Yeah. That's actually, that's a pretty good idea.

I think we ought to do that. Uh-huh. Emma Banuelos asks, if we did meet other intelligent life, how would we talk to them? Would we assume that they already know our language? Yeah. Well, they always do in the movies, I have to say. They always speak colloquial American English, right? That's good.

It's sort of like in every other movie. Right. Well, Spock had a Boston accent, actually. Yeah, slight Boston accent. He had a suburban Boston accent. Is it suburban? Okay. Yeah, live long and prosper. Yeah.

I see. Okay, you could be a Vulcan. Sure. Yeah, what was the question again? Oh, how do we communicate with them? Well, look, nobody knows. Nobody knows. Obviously, we don't.

We forget the language because you don't know what they speak. If they even have a language, one assumes they have a language if they built a radio transmitter. But you could always send pictures. I think it's a fairly safe bet that they have vision, that they have eyes, right? Because you're on a planet, it's around a star, there's all this light falling on you. And if you don't use it, you're probably going to get eaten up by something that does. So I think sending pictures, and that's sort of what we have done when we bolt greeting cards on the sides of spacecraft. I think pictures are a good way to go.

Do we have time for a real quick one? Real quick one from Antonio Rodriguez. If humans visited another civilization, could they be mistaken for monsters? Well, you know, maybe that's your definition of monster. Maybe you would be. Think of what happened, actually, when Cortez came to, you know, Latin America, right? He was on a horse, and they'd never seen that before in the Aztecs, and they thought maybe he was some sort

of monster. So, who knows? If my ex-girlfriend visited another civilization, she would be considered a monster. Really? Gosh. All right. That's complimentary enough. All right. Well, we have to take another short break on this discussion. But don't worry.

We'll be right back and we'll be answering some more cosmic queries from you, our brilliant listeners. Stick around for more StarTalk All-Stars. Welcome back to StarTalk All-Stars. Welcome back to StarTalk All-Stars. I'm your All-Star host, Seth Shostak. And co-hosting with me in this studio is professional comedian Ray Ellen. Hey! He can talk with his hands there. And our skeptic expert, Ben Radford from Skeptical Inquirer, is here to provide the latest theories on UFO sightings

and some theories that aren't maybe the latest but are still germane. All right. What's our next question here, Ray? All right. Ellie Mintz writes, is it more plausible aliens would be future humans who figured out time travel rather than travel the universe? All right. So they're actually us. They're not alien beings, that kind of thing.

That happens a lot on TV. It does. Ben, what do you think? Happen a lot in the universe, Ben? Yeah. You know, I'm not a big fan of time travel stories. Part is just because I'm so skeptical that the contradictions pop out at me. So I'm going to have to say that the likelihood of people mastering time travel is far less than it is of mastering intergalactic travels. I'm going to say no.

Yeah, no. And also, there's a motivation. I mean, if you had time travel, would you come back to 2016? I mean— Well, it depends. If they're in the year 95-80, then maybe 2016 seems quaint and charming, the way I would view, you know, 1955. Yeah, it wasn't that quaint and charming, I can tell you. All right, I've been there. I've done that.

All right. Maybe I go to 1869. Okay. So you don't like this Terminator deal where the aliens are just us. Yeah. No. I think that's cheating the universe. They couldn't make some other species. Yeah. I think you might be right. Evane273, if aliens made contact with us or we made contact with them, what's the likelihood that they would have the same 10-based number system as us? For example, if they had eight fingers or finger-like extremities, do you think their number system would be eight-based?

Yeah. Well, actually, I think they would be. And the fact that we have, you know, five digits on each hand and so forth and so on, that's all an accident of evolution. It has to do with fishy ancestors or something like that. Okay. And to be honest, four, as long as you had that opposable thumb. If you don't have the opposable thumb, you're probably not talking about it because, you know, you haven't invented television yet or radio or any of that stuff.

Or Twitter. Yeah. But eight actually works better in the binary number system than 10 does. Right. And so I think that by the time they get to computers and start building smart machines to take over their jobs, they might do better with 4 on each hand instead of 5. That's my opinion. But, you know, I don't think there's anything magic about 5 on each.

Solidamian. That's an interesting name. about five on each. Solidamian, that's an interesting name. Solidamian asks, do you think there is an intergalactic law that prohibited other live forms to communicate with us? Yeah. Are we being

boycotted, you mean? Are they deliberately keeping quiet? This is sometimes called the zoo hypothesis, actually. You know, they know we're here, but they're just holding back and not betraying themselves. What do you think of that, Ben? Does that strike you as likely? It strikes me as unlikely in the extreme.

I mean, look, if you really did find alien life, and of course to them we would be the alien life, why in the world wouldn't you try to contact it and, you know, study it and, you know, figure out what's going on? Unless, of course, there's some sort of version of the prime directive, right? Don't interfere. So, uh, you know, I, no, I, I don't think that that's, I don't think that's, that's likely. I mean, you know, you're, you want to find out, assuming that the aliens are, are curious enough to, you know, to seek beyond their, their local environment, then why wouldn't they go ahead and take the extra step and contact us? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, it doesn't make any sense to me too ahead and take the extra step and contact us? Yeah, yeah. It doesn't make any sense to me, too.

And also, by the way, they all have to agree on that. I mean, maybe these aliens over here say, oh, we're going to keep quiet. And those aliens over there say, hey, look, it's an export market. Let's get in touch with them. Right.

It's an export market. We got cow anuses to sell, man. Yeah. I can get them for you wholesale. Isn't that what they say? This is from Steve Andrews. How likely is it that an alien life form is so similar to us we wouldn't notice if they were already walking among us? That's sort of like the movie Cocoon.

Yeah, they save on costuming that way, right? Everybody looks like us. Right, indeed, that they adopt our human form. I mean, it's like going to Mars and pretending to be a bacterium. All right, sorry, Ben, could they do that? Shapeshift and look like humans so they blend in. I would say no. I mean, look, I mean, as you pointed out, I mean, the reason that we have our physical form is, of course, we're the product of evolution. And under the specific environmental constraints of Earth and elsewhere. So the idea, I mean, I guess you could have sort of like the character on DS9, the Rene Bourgeois character, I forgot his name, that would, Odo, that could sort of be whatever.

character, I forgot his name, that would, Odo, that could sort of be whatever. But no, I think the likelihood that another species, another alien species would be so similar to us and yet come from presumably a completely different environment, or at least a significantly different environment, does not seem likely to me. Let me elaborate on this tact a little bit, because some people say to me, you know, the reason we haven't met the aliens, the reason they haven't been in touch is because they're unhappy with us. They don't like what we're doing. We're wrecking the environment or we have nuclear weapons or we have reality television. Something about our behavior is unpalatable to them. What do you think about that to me? Well, what do you think about that? I, you know, certainly humans have done some bad things to the planet.

We've also done many good things to the planet as well. So let's keep that in mind. Yeah, I think that the idea that we're being ignored or being subjected to alien disdain is, you know what? Sorry. Let's just apologize to the aliens. Say, you know what? Sorry. Let's just apologize to the aliens. Say, you know what? Sorry we offended you. Sorry about the reality TV.

We'll forget about the Kardashians. Come down and talk to us. Yeah. You know, to me, it's very much like the ants in my backyard figuring that I'm not spending a lot of time studying them because they're always at war with one another. Actually, that's not the reason. I've got other things to do. Yeah. Maybe the aliens were going to show up. They're like, you know, I don't want TMZ at the landing site, so forget reason. I've got other things to do. Yeah, maybe the aliens were going to show up.

They're like, you know, I don't want TMZ at the landing site, so forget it. I'm taking off. Could be. Repeat writes, why would aliens traverse the vast distances of space just to probe our butts? Seems like a waste of time and perhaps a little douchey. I see. Well, all right. This got a bit scatological.

Ben, do you have some insight into alien motives here? I don't know about your butts. I would like to think that my butt is worth coming across the universe to examine. I don't want to get too personal here. Why are you full of yourself? Well, look, I mean, again, this gets back to the bigger question of why in the world would, literally in the world, why would they come all this way to, you know, to probe hillbillies and to make, you know, circles in a wheat?

I mean, it just doesn't make sense. I mean, of course, if they're going to contact us, as Seth well knows, they're much more likely to use a method that's going to conserve energy. It's going to convey much more information. And I just, you know, the problem is that when you look at the claims that are being made for evidence of alien presence here on Earth, right, you know, cattle mutilations, crop struggles, this and that. It all evaporates under close scrutiny.

And then you're left with, like, there's no real reason why they would be, you know, they would be shooting around in our skies and not go ahead and land on the White House lawn and announce themselves. There you go. Good answer. And what a great question from Repeat. This is from James Pierce. Can you please tell us about the Black Knight satellite and what it might be? I can't find a straight answer on the Internet.

The Black Knight satellite. Is that like Planet Schultz? Have you ever heard of the Black Knight satellite? No, nobody's ever heard of the Black Knight. Maybe that's the whole idea, that nobody can hear the Black Knight Satellite. Not that we can discuss. Yeah, I guess it's one of those black projects. It's like a Martin Lawrence movie.

Well, you know, there's a storm brewing. We're going to the lightning round. All right. So I'm going to just grab this bell. Got your bell? Yeah, so I can get my luggage taken care of. Okay. All right.

All right. You ready, Seth? Let's do it. Here we go. Richard LaPierre asks, to whom does one report a sighting? Oh, well, if you've seen a sighting and you think there's something credible about it, a lot of people call me, but I tell them to call an organization known as MUFON, M-U-F-O-N, Mutual UFO Network. And they actually do take down the information. They have

an online form and stuff like that. Is there any other place they ought to go, Ben? No, that's my go-to. I mean, you know, sometimes if there's a sighting that's like in my area, I may try to investigate it or, you know, get Robert Schaefer or another investigator to do it. But typically the answer is call MUFON and if, you know, see what they say. All right. Jay Turtle wants to know, could there be a civilization buried more than seven and a half miles under the Earth's crust? Well, it's kind of hard to answer. I don't know why there's seven and a half. I mean, the guy knows it to like a couple of percent that he knows that. Jay has gone seven point two miles down. He hasn't gone the whole seven and a half. Yeah. He's got a deep base, a deep basement. You know, if you go that far down, the conditions are actually not so good. I mean, it's very hot.

The rock is getting soft. I mean, you're in the mantle of the earth. And if there's somebody down there, I don't know what they're going to eat. Because you don't have any sunlight to grow anything. Right. Or to feed your cows. Twinkies. Yeah.

Sure. Let's go to another one. Uy Ocha writes, Could our solar system contain ancient alien artifacts like those from 2001 A Space Odyssey? How might we be able to search for such artifacts? Okay. Well, Ben knows about the artifact situation. Yeah.

Could they exist? Sure. Have they existed, for example, on the infamous space on Mars that Hoagland and Richard Hoagland and others have talked about? No. So, you know, who knows? As we get closer and better resolution images of our solar system, we might find something that resembles something that was intelligently designed. But until then, I'm going with no. Yeah, too bad.

Nothing for the museums yet. Sorry, Uy-Ocha. Matthew Coles writes, is it possible we've been visited before, but it just takes so long to return that it seems ancient aliens are a myth? That sort of ties into the whole pyramid question, I suppose. Well,

let me say, about ancient aliens, and Ben writes articles about these things. I mean, I've been to the pyramids a couple of times, and my theory about who built the pyramids was, it was Egyptians. Now, I know that's radical. But if you go there, you can see all sorts of projects, you know, earthen ramps where they ran out of money and stuff like that. Do you think that those people were so stupid that they couldn't build giant pointy buildings by piling rocks on top of one another? I mean, I just find that condescending in the extreme. Nobody says who built the Colosseum. Everybody knows it was Romans. But if it's a pointy building, well, they needed alien help. Well, but then those are also older.

Yeah, but some of them are not older. I mean, the Mayan pyramids are not older, right? Yeah. I never heard anybody claim that. Well, no, but they do. They do. Except for the Mayans, I never heard anybody claim that, well, okay. Well, no, but they do. They do. Except for the Mayans, of course. Ryan Milbourne writes, how long have you known that Neil is an alien? Yeah, I don't know who can answer that. We should let Neil speak for himself.

All I can say is that if Neil were an alien, you know, I would like to know that because I think it would help our funding situation. All right. Okay. Okay. Even if scientists find proof of aliens with the amount of skepticism on aliens in today's society, will the public believe it? That's Mark at Denshin Onsenchi. Yeah. What do you think, Ben? I think absolutely. I think that there's not a doubt in my mind that with all the bizarre, unusual things that are going on in the world, I mean, we're getting information about new planets.

I mean, it seems like every few months there's some new announcement of some possibly habitable planet out there. planet out there. The idea that the existence of alien life is such a bizarre, mind-blowing, life-altering concept that people can't psychologically handle it or socially handle it, I think is absurd. I think that if aliens were to be proven to exist tomorrow, next month, or next year, we as humans would do what we always do, which is incorporate that information, learn more about them, and proceed. I don't think the people would suddenly be reduced to quivering blobs, terrified by what might happen from 1950s films. Okay, we have time for maybe one real quick one, yes. Grumpy Crumpy in Texas, if you were part of an advanced alien civilization,

would you want to visit Earth? Why or why not? Who knows what the aliens are interested in? But as we said, you know, there's nothing here for them, no raw materials that they need. Maybe they've just come because, I don't know, they like sports or something. If you were part, if you were part of an alien civilization. I would come to study the biology. Yeah, I think that that's interesting. Because that'll be special, wherever you

are. Alrighty, thanks to our listeners for those terrific cosmic questions. We're out of time today, but I just wanted to say a

special thanks to our guest, Ben Radford, for Skyping in, and my wonderful co-host, Ray Ellen. Hey! Great to be here.

And of course, thanks to all of our listeners here on StarTalk All-Stars. I've been your host, Seth Shostak. Until next time, I hope that you'll be tuning in at that next time. And meanwhile, I'll be watching the skies.

This is StarTalk.