Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How SETI Works

Episode Date: January 22, 2022

SETI stands for 'search for extraterrestrial intelligence,' and the term is used to describe both the SETI institute and the search for alien life in general. In this classic spaced-out episode, Josh and Chuck explore the origin, aims and challenges facing SETI. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, Chuck here. I saw a UFO last night. Actually, that's not true, but it would be a great story if I were setting up this episode for March 1st, 2012. How SETI works. Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Don't get it confused. Oh no. What is that? What was that? That was my impersonation of Burgess Meredith. Okay. Thank you. That's pretty good. Thanks. That was a good Burgess Meredith, Chuck. Yeah. You in the mood for alien talk? Sure. This is the second time we've done something like this. Almost a year later. Yeah, right at it. We did how UFOs work live in Austin. Yeah, last March, so yeah. I guess once a year we do aliens talk. We'll talk aliens. Yeah. But hey,

before we get started, may I take a second? Yeah. I want to just say a special hi to my wife, Yumi. Right. Who made me the happiest guy in the world. You should just call her, dude. I'm February 13th. Yeah. I could just call her. I'm February 13th when we got married. Indeed. Yeah. Any deets or you're just going to? No, that's all. All right. I was just wanting to share my happiness with everybody out there. Very well done. Thank you very much. Hey, Yumi. So let's get back to aliens, okay? Yes. Okay. So we are doing this in honor of Are We Alone Month on Science Channel, right? Yes. So the month of March is Are We Alone Month and Science Channel every Tuesday I believe at 10 is having a premiere of some new show that has something to do with the search for extraterrestrial

life. Yeah, cool stuff. Yeah, it's going to be very cool. And I mean, there's some like all shows are going to be awesome. Sure. But there's some that are clearly going to be really awesome, like through the wormhole with Morgan Freeman. With Morgan Freeman. I mean, that in the context of an Are We Alone Month? Yeah. That's big news. Also, the alien encounters with Nick Sagan. Got to be related to Carl. Right? Carl Pilkington, yes. Yes. And then if you're in the mood for a contest, what would a month be without one? There is a SETI live contest where the prize is to go visit SETI. No way. Go to the California, to the Institute? Yes. Wow. Pretty sweet. Yes. So this is all going on on Science Channel all month long. And if you want more details, watch Science Channel,

pal. Yeah, we're hitting them up on Facebook. I bet they have info there. Yeah. And in honor of this month, this very special month, we are doing How SETI Works, which is an acronym, SETI, if you don't know, for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Yes. And I joked before we did this that Are We Alone Month will be followed by Yes, We're Alone Day. Sort of a joke, but they haven't really found a lot of stuff yet. Well, I don't know. Let me give you an example of something. The wow. Have you heard of the wow signal? Yeah, we talked about this before. We did. When? I think it might have been one of the webcasts. Okay. It definitely rang a bell that had your stank on it. No, we talked about the Yosemite Sam signal. Oh, I know. But I think

we talked about wow a couple of years ago. Okay. Well, old webcasts. Let me tell you again, let me refresh your memory because you clearly don't remember. Clearly. August 15th, 1977, a guy who's now known as Dr. Jerry Eamon, E-H-M-A-M. I keep wanting to call him Irmin. Yeah. He was manning the big year radio telescope at Ohio State University and was analyzing some data from it and basically saw this is what it looks like. It's a bunch of numbers and letters. It looks like the matrix scroll. Very much so. Captured. Yes. But what that is is a burst of radio activity transmitted on the 1420.456 megahertz frequency for 72 seconds. W-A-L-N. Right. And it was basically the closest thing we've ever gotten to hard evidence of a radio transmission

from an alien civilization. Right. It met all of the criteria that SETI follows, which we'll talk about later, for radio transmissions from intelligent life. Right? Yeah. The problem is, is after searching for it for like 50 times specifically, it's never been found again. Right. And the reason it's called the wow transmission is because Jerry Eamon circled it and wrote wow with an exclamation point. Right. And that's why it's called that. So although it since that time, nothing else has come up in that same area and we haven't had anything even remotely close to it, SETI still continues. Right? Yeah. And SETI is both a movement and a group of people. It's an institute. Yeah. Well, there's the SETI Institute and there's

just independent SETI operations. Yeah. I mean, you can use SETI as a, would that be a noun? Because it is a search. Yeah, yeah. You're right. Just a funky noun. Right. But let's talk about it, Chuck. Let's talk about SETI, the challenges it has. Well, first of all, if you've seen the movie Contact. I have. Apparently, it's not too inaccurate from the writer of this article who was Freud and Lakewood, wasn't it? He said that that movie, if you want to watch that one, is fairly accurate and on track. Well, it was based on a book written by Carl Sagan and he definitely knew his stuff. Yeah. In fact, the Sagan Institute is one of the parts of SETI Institute. Very nice. Yeah. Or the Sagan Research Center, I think. Gotcha. So go ahead. You were

saying? Oh, well, so let's talk a little bit about the origin of it. SETI came about in a time when there was a large intellectual push toward searching for alien life. A lot of very, very smart people suddenly started postulating that there's probably other people out there. Yeah. There's gotta be. Two guys, Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Ciccione wrote a paper in nature in 1959 and they basically said, look, if we look, we may very well not find anything. Right. But if we don't look, we're definitely not going to find anything. That's a good point. And that came at a time when a guy named Frank Drake, an astrophysicist and astronomer, was trying to start his own search and he eventually founded SETI, I think in 1960. Founded the SETI Institute or just SETI?

SETI. Well, he conducted the first SETI search. Okay. The Drake did. Yeah, Frank Drake did. Gotcha. And it was based on something called the Drake Equation, which I find just utterly fascinating and refreshingly understandable as far as theoretical math equations go. Yeah. N is the number of civilizations in the Milky Way whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable. So n equals r times fp times ne times fl times fi times fc times l. And then there's the r is the rate of formation of stars over the lifetime of the galaxy, and that's anywhere from like 10 to 40 a year. Yeah. Stars suitable for development of intelligent life. Right.

That narrows it down. Then there's the fraction of those stars with planets. Fp. Then there's the average number of those planets that are Earth type, meaning suitable for life as we understand it. Yeah, that's the ne. That's about 50% of the 50% of stars with planets. So we're starting to whittle down pretty quickly. And then there's the fraction of those planets where life develops, that's estimated at as much as 100%. Yeah. And then there's the fraction of life that develops intelligence. So it's not just enough to be an amoeba, you have to be an amoeba capable of creating a radio. Right. That's pretty low as well, about 10%.

And then another 10% is the fraction of planets where intelligent life develops technology such as radio. Yeah. Okay. So you've got life. And then l. Intelligent life. And then technology. Yeah. And then you have the lifetime of that communicative civilization in years. So boom. Multiply that on out. You got your Drake equation. And you have as little as one as much as billions. Well, plus it's as little as one or billions because it depends on what value you put in there. And everyone's going to put in different values. So the Drake equation is going to have a wide swath. Yes. Makes sense. Yeah. So you've got this, this is the framework, the Drake equation

created by Frank Drake for the founder of SETI. This is the framework that SETI conducts its research with. Like one of the things they do is try to figure out exactly how many stars out there have planets with that are suitable for life to really kind of plug in the best possible data into the Drake equation and to help them figure out where to look because there's three main challenges for SETI that they face just as a concept and an organization. Yeah. And they are, you have a really big sky out there, right? Yeah. You have a lot of frequencies that could that, you have a lot of radio frequencies and you have a limited amount of telescopes. Not much equipment. No. Because it's very expensive. Exactly. And while SETI is

funded to a large degree, it's not funded to a large degree compared to like, like when it was part of NASA, I think it was only like 1% of their budget. Even still, that was like the most money SETI's ever had. Yeah. But they're pretty well funded. The SETI Institute as far as private funding goes, they're doing okay. Yeah. I mean, they're nonprofit obviously, so they're not getting rich. You know what I mean? No, they're kind of hurting right now. Oh, are they? I thought they were doing all right. No. They also receive federal funds and that's all but dried up right now because of the economic downturn. Yeah, SETI's the first to go in it. Yeah. All right. So you proposed the three

problems. Here are a couple of approaches for the large sky problem. A lot of area out there. So they have two approaches there. The wide field search, basically casting a wide non-specific net over, you know, a low resolution over a long period, I'm sorry, a short period of time over a wide area could get you some nibbles if you were fishing, let's say, but it's going to be difficult to find out exactly like where this stuff is coming from. Right. Or a targeted search, which is what my money would be on, which are limited to sun-like stars, like they basically factor in more of Drake's equation in this one. Say, let's look at places where we might find, you know, target these things where we might find ETs. Right. And they do both of those,

depending, they have various projects going on, ongoing. And some are targeted, some are wide field search. Yeah. So they're kind of covering their bases as much as possible. The next challenge was, you know, what frequency to listen for, to listen to, you know, like it's not a radio dial. No, but even with a radio dial, even with like a walkie-talkie, like if you've ever used one of those, like if you're not on the right frequency, you are going to miss everything that's being told to you. So there's, like you said, it's not a radio dial. It doesn't go from like 88.5 all the way to 107.5. They're billions from alternative to country. Exactly. There are billions of radio frequencies. And they, I mean, which one are you going to listen to?

You can listen to them all, but again, you're cycling through them. You're not able to spend a lot of time. It's much like the same dilemma with the sky you have with the radio frequencies. Plus they're full of noise. Yep. That's another problem. Big problem. Natural occurring stuff. Right. But there is a window in the radio frequency that's called the water hole, which is pretty cool. Yeah. It's a natural place in the radio frequency spectrum. And by the way, radio is, they're light waves. Yeah. It's a type of light wave, but they're very specific. They exist on a specific frequency. But in this spectrum, the band, there's this thing called the water hole, which goes from the 1 to 10 gigahertz range. Yes. And it has very little natural background

noise, like very few things broadcast in this frequency. And the reason being, these frequencies are caused by hydrogen atoms and hydroxyl ions, both of which are constituents of water, which is why it's called the water hole. And they suspect that for a couple of reasons, alien civilizations would be aware of this. One, that it's just so profoundly unique in the radio spectrum that if you had any kind of awareness of the radio spectrum, you would stumble upon this. Yeah. And that you would intentionally broadcast in a low noise frequency. Exactly. Because you want to be heard. Sure. Yeah. I mean, anybody who broadcasts on the radio wants to be heard, right? Sure. And then the other reason they think that alien civilizations would know about it is because

water, with which it's associated, is considered an essential to life, and therefore universal among intelligent life. It's not geocentric, the concept of water, is it? Right. So aliens would be familiar with water and would thus be familiar with the water hole in the frequency spectrum as well. So this is probably where they're putting most of their research or their effort into this water hole band of frequencies. Yeah. I mean, they search all over, but pretty much all SETI operations will search the water hole as part of their ops. Then there's magical frequencies too. Like basically, they're saying like, where on this band of billions of frequencies is there some sort of universal pattern? And one of the things

that they figured out is prime numbers might be a good place to look because prime numbers are part of math and they're universal constant. Right. So an advanced civilization might be aware of prime numbers and if they're trying to communicate to another advanced civilization, they may be broadcasting on prime number channels. Crazy. That's a magical frequency. I wonder if they've searched the Pi station. So so far we've got two of the big problems tackled. Yes. Generally. Their third one is the most down-to-earth problem. Yeah, no equipment basically. These radio telescopes are expensive to build and so there's not a whole lot of them. So they said, you know, there's a few ways we can handle this. We can

conduct limited runs on ones that are already out there, basically rent space from other dudes. We can conduct analysis of data already acquired by other dudes. So like, hey, you've been listening in on all these frequencies. Let us see your data and we'll just work from that. Or we can build SETI dedicated radio telescopes, which is clearly the least popular because it's so expensive. Right. I mean, it's the most popular but least feasible. Yeah. And like the projects that they have ongoing for a wide target search or wide field search or targeted search, they have different projects dedicated, different types of radio use like Project Phoenix rents time at some of the better radio telescopes around the world. Australia.

Arecibo. Yeah, in Puerto Rico. The one in West Virginia. Green Bank, West Virginia has a huge radio telescope and that's where the first SETI conference was held. Oh, really? 1960, I believe. Yeah. And then there's the Serendip project, which piggybacks. Cracks me up for some reason. Why? Serendip, I don't know. Just because it's short for Serendipity. It sounds like your friend Adam that shortens everything. Oh, yeah. Like he would say, yeah, we met up. It was a bit of Serendip. Yeah, he would say that it's totes Serendip. Totes Serendip. Yeah, so they piggyback by basically saying like, hey, like you said, let me see your dad. I want you're done with it. We want to go over it too. Yeah. It's like, hey, man,

it's like the hippy rob version of astronomy. Boy, he had made an appearance in a while. He just did. I didn't expect him to pop up in SETI if he didn't pop up in magic mushrooms. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're

going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Project Serendip, like you said, it takes advantage of a lot of telescope time, but they don't have the control to say, hey, point it over there. So they have a lot of hours, but they're just basically, that's the wide search being cast. And then you said like the most desirable one was having their own telescope. Well, SETI figured out something, rather than making a huge, you're paying for a huge radio telescope, they figured out that they can take a bunch of backyard satellite dishes, which I'm sure are really easy to come by these days. Yeah. You know, the kind like from the 80s. Oh yeah. Put a bunch of those together. They're

like eight feet wide. Right. Yeah. You put a bunch of those together and connect their signals using a process called interferometry. Nice. Thank you. Dude, well done. First try. And you can basically simulate a huge, large telescope for a fraction of the cost. Yeah, it's like linking a network of computers, which is actually something also being done. We might as well get into that. Yeah. The SETI at symbol at home project. And that's actually the SETI Institute, isn't it? Yeah. So they decided that, hey, instead of building a couple of super computers to analyze this data, because that's one of the big problems is there's so much data, it's not like you can just plug it into your laptop. Right. But you can plug a tiny chunk

into a laptop and network a bunch of laptops together to do the power of the super computers. And that is what they've done. And you can participate. Yeah. It's pretty ingenious. And there's other things that I think SETI at home started it. Now there's things like folding at home, which you simulate protein folding for cancer research. Same thing. And I'm sure there's other ones that I didn't get a chance to look. But SETI at home started it where you, it's a screensaver, but it's also a program. And while it's running, it downloads a chunk of data from the AirSibo radio telescope. Yeah. And that's like your little assignment. And it's like a 100 second chunk, maybe something like that. It doesn't seem like much, but it takes like 10 to 20 hours

for the normal computer to process it. But like you said, if you have thousands of computers doing this, you have a thousand times the processing power all of a sudden for free. Pretty cool. And while your computer's analyzing it, it's making notes of all this stuff using SETI's algorithms. And then it uploads the results to SETI and then downloads another chunk for analysis. And dude, I bet this is a very popular thing to do for stargazers. Oh, yeah. For stargazing nerds of the world. There was a guy I remember who was in Arizona, I think, and he was fired from his job as like the IT head for the Department of Education in this one community because he booted SETI at home onto all the computers without asking. But I mean,

it's not a big deal. It doesn't take that much processing power. And it just kind of runs in the background. Yeah, who cares? Well, he was made a mockery of by the local news, like that he was fired because of his search for aliens. Right. They made him out to be some crack bot. Yeah, it was pretty bad. But yeah, some poor guy got fired for that. SETI at home got him fired. I said, I bet he got a job with SETI or something though. I don't bet that. You don't think so? They just said, sorry. Thanks anyway. Pretty much. Well, you talked about building your own in the Alien Telescope Array. I'm sorry, the Alan Telescope Array. Yeah, I kept taking it like that until I found out it's named after Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft who donated all of the

money for it. Well, that is still underway as far as its construction. I think they were down for a little while because of a lack of funding and it's a $26 million deal. But I think as of 2011, they were up and running again. And part of it is complete to the extent, I think, where they can use it for things. Right. But they're still not finished with it. No, they have enough money to construct it, but they didn't have enough money to run it. So they have a skeleton crew on it right now. Gotcha. But it is operational, I think. It is. They're hoping that they're going to be able to fund it by leasing some time on it to the Air Force who is interested in using it. They should try bake sale. I know. You know, it'll be a great day when

schools have all the funding they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a stealth bomber. That'll be the day. Somebody should put that on like a bumper sticker or something. We could shorten it, but yeah, agreed. Should we mention the Fermi paradox? Yes, as good a time as any. I mean, one of the things that happens to SETI is that they're constantly pummeled by critics and a lot of them cite the Fermi paradox, too. Well, here's what SETI Institute says because I dug into their FAQ a little bit. One of the questions is why do we think that there might be life out there? And SETI said, you should keep in mind that we are one planet around a very ordinary star and there are roughly 400 billion

other stars and nearly 100 billion other galaxies and they think it would be extraordinary if we were the only thinking beings in all these enormous realms. Fermi and Rico, Fermi, said that if it takes life billions of years to develop intelligence and signal or travel to the stars and there are billions of the worlds in the universe and the universe is 13 billion years old plus, then why haven't we been visited yet? Yeah, when you look at it like that, the odds are... Makes sense. They just increase exponentially. It's kind of like a perverted version of the Drake equation used to disprove the existence of life. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when

questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new

podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought

I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So what happens if we get a signal? What happens if they're sitting around one day and they hear phone home come over the radio waves? Well, they have a strict set of protocols that start with the first person who finds it to who gets told first, what agencies learn of it. It's pretty cool.

Apparently, contact follows the course of it pretty accurately. But so a signal is detected, right? The first thing they do is they move the radio telescope away from the signal and then they move it back. I bet that's nerve-wracking. I'll bet too. Because you probably just want to stay locked on it. You're going to lose your signal. But you can't do that because you've got to prove that it's genuinely coming from there. So if you move it and then move it back and the signal wanes and then comes back, you know that you have an extraterrestrial signal. That's a big one. The next step then is to figure out whether you're getting it from a satellite or from elsewhere on earth.

After that, you're starting to shake. Your palms are sweaty. And you start to rule out extraterrestrial sources like pulsars, quasars, other things that broadcast radio frequencies. By this time, you may have tinkled a little bit in your pants. And you are on the phone with another radio telescope, hopefully one on another continent saying, hey, can you go check these coordinates and see if you're getting this frequency? Point your little machine that way. What do you see or hear? And if they come back and say, yep, you say, well, it's time to announce it to the world. Now I got to get out my book, The SETI Institute, The Declaration of Principles Concerning

Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Yeah. And SETI Institute says, no one's keeping anything a secret. No, they want it disseminated quickly and widely. Yeah. But they want you to follow the proper channels first. And all the astronomical community gets first dibs on learning of it. Oh, sure. Then after that, you go to the UN. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. The UN, a lot of other international bodies, and you say, hey, guys, we have confirmed extraterrestrial contact. And they say, awesome. And the astronomer goes along and says, okay, we're moving on to the next people. Eventually you get to the public, and the person who discovered it is meant to have the honor of announcing it to the world.

Yes. According to the protocols. Jody Foster. And SETI is on record, by the way. The SETI Institute is saying that they don't think that there are aliens that we've been hiding in Roswell, New Mexico. They said that the presence, that would be like the biggest discovery in the history of science. And A, you wouldn't want to keep it a secret. And B, there would be thousands and thousands of people working on it. And they said it would just be impossible. So they're not these crackpots that think, oh, we've got aliens hidden away, working on a farm in the desert of New Mexico, harvesting on water farms. And that's where we got our microwaves from.

Exactly. And also looked at their FAQ under the, are we sending signals? Because I thought that was kind of interesting, because obviously close encounters, they sent messages out. And they said they are a completely passive experiment. They're only looking. They are not sending. However, we have been sending signals unintentionally for 50 years or more. Yes. It's the 30 since we started broadcasting on the radio. Yeah. In television, this is the early TV broadcast reached out to about 1,000 nearby stars. But they said it's very unlikely that any alien civilization could have picked up on that. No. But we are inadvertently broadcasting.

Probably in the water hole too, I would think. And the other reason we don't send out signals is because if the nearest civilization they said is 100 light years away, it would be 200 years to get a reply. And it's just not a very good way to spend your time. Well, plus also it's in the protocols that we decide through like the UN and other international bodies whether or not to respond to a signal. Right. That's like one of the last steps. Well, they said that we've sent symbolic messages before. Like, hey, here is what our solar system is like. Here are the compounds important for life. Here's the structure of our DNA in the form of a human. They say it's symbolic, but I think they're like, oh, you never know.

Right. So they're liars then when they say they're passive. Well, they are passive. They have done that in the past. They say it was like the 70s. They're passive as far as astronomy goes, active as far as lying on their FAQ goes. No. I think it was 1974 was the last time they sent out a message. There was the Viking or some, I can't remember the spaceship we sent into orbit or into outer space that had like gold records containing all sorts of information, like the world's great information and knowledge on them. Oh, yeah. Do you remember that? Sort of. Viking? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was Viking. Let's probably get that wrong there. So what's in the future for SETI right now?

Well, the future with the programs like SETI at home could get more people active if they're interested in their home. The future could be good there. They said they might be sending or looking for light at some point because it may not come via radio. It may come via light. You never know. Yeah. Frank Drake is all about that one now. He says that this is like the hot new field for SETI is optical astronomy. Oh yeah. And of course, finishing up things like the Allen Telescope Array is important. And then there's SETI at home. I mean, if you want to go do that, it's pretty easy to go download. I had folding at home. I've never had SETI at home. Oh, you did folding? Uh-huh. Cool. And then my computer crashed and I was just like,

yeah. Oh really? Maybe that crashed it. I don't know, maybe. I could tell the difference when it was processing. Oh yeah. And that's SETI. So if this kind of piqued your interest, there's plenty more information out there. You can also check out SETI's stuff on Science Channel during Are We Alone Month in March. Premiers come on, I think, Tuesdays at 10, starting March 6th. Every Tuesday. Yep, like moonlighting. Was that on Tuesday? I think so. I seem to remember being drawn to the television on Tuesdays. I think it was moonlighting in 18. Nice. Or was it moonlighting in Love Boat? No, it was Love Boat, Fantasy Island. Yeah, yeah. Those two are definitely a guy. Yeah. Let's see, recapping. What else is at the beginning?

I'm married. You, me, and I are married. And I guess that's it. If you want to read SETI, you can type that word into the search bar at howstuffworks.com, S-E-T-I. And then we'll bring up this very nice article, including cool graphs and screenshots from SETI at home for some reason. And since I said search bar, I think I said handy search bar even. It's time for listening to mail. All right, Josh, I'm going to call this Lucha Libra slash American Wrestling from Zach. That was a good one. Chuck, you suggested that wrestlers carry fake blood packs, not quite true, or at least usually not true. Instead, most wrestlers carry a razor blade in order to blade their foreheads. I've heard this actually, I knew that. We'll cut make a little cut and bleed.

Right around the hairline after being hit in the head with a chair or a cage or another hard weapon. You were also talking about the big companies in America. The WWE is the biggest right now, with TNA as the second biggest and Ring of Honor is the third. WWE and TNA are on big TV networks, while the Ring of Honor is only on the air in certain markets. And there are many, many independent leagues, including Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan's Resistance Pro. Did you know that? No. I guess so, dude. He's got his own wrestling league. I wonder if he's still on the dope. I don't think so.

I saw him one day. He's really tall, which surprised me for some reason. I think I noticed that when the Cubs were in the World Series and he's saying the National Anthem, or no, he's saying that take me out to the ball game. Oh, really? He didn't even stretch yet. He's taller than all those guys. So Zach says, when talking about the rules, you're saying that weapons are not allowed. And I think I might have said that this is different with American wrestling, but not true. He said the chair was just really popular in the late 90s because they book matches specifically

to be more violent. So they would knock the ref down and people would use the chair when the ref wasn't watching, but you would still get DQ'd if the ref was to see that. And he also said Rey must... You would get Dairy Queen. Oh man, that'd be great. And then he said Rey Mysterio is out with injury, but there's a good chance he will be back soon. So he's still kicking it. That was a heck of a dispatch from the wrestling world.

Yeah. And, dude, I've redacted about half of it. Thanks, Zach. That is Zach from, I don't know where he's from. He's from Billy Corgan's basement. Well, wow. If you have some supplementary information, not even necessarily correction, I think Zach handled that very well. Sure. We like to hear that stuff all the time and we frequently read them as listener mail. So please feel free to go ahead and send us something. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can send us a note or a message on Facebook

at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Or you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on myHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House.

But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.