The Out-of-this-World UFO Show

Have you ever seen mysterious lights in the sky, or glimpsed an alien spacecraft? This show provides a probing yet playful discussion about Unidentified Flying Objects.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist and the director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium. And I'm joined this week by comedian Eugene Mirman. Eugene, welcome to StarTalk Radio.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Hello. It's good to be here.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sounded pretty canned. Put on the welcome switch. Hello, it's good to be here, yes.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Well, I've already been, I'm here. Hi, no, it's great to be here. Is that better? Is that less? Is that more sincere? It is a true honor to be finally part of CBS Radio family.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, is that right? Yeah. Well, this week, our topic is UFOs, unidentified flying objects, about which so much is written, and so many people think about them and care about them. And I thought we should bring some sort of physics to the subject, or at least some kind of analysis.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  No more speculation.

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. You know, there's thousands of sightings of UFOs every year. And of course, most of them can be explained away as the consequence of natural phenomenon, like unusual cloud formations, or bright planets, lightning, and especially meteorological or astronomical observations.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  And some are just spaceships from other worlds, visiting, preparing to take us over.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, there's some would be that.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  That's one explanation, along with your gas cloud thing.

• 1:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what happens is, when you see something unfamiliar in the sky, the brain tries to understand it and come to terms with it. It'll go overboard in doing so. And so what it doesn't understand, it connects the dots, it invents missing pieces, and so when you try to judge what an object is, or just judge how big it is, your brain fills in the gaps.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  It's the same reason that George Lopez Show's still on the air.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what that is?

• 2:02Speaker 01

  The brain fills in the gaps and making it make sense.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but what happens is our perception, about which there's still a lot of research going on in the neuroscience community, the depth of our perception is still being understood, and how it can fool us, and how we can think it's giving us correct information, when in fact, it's not. And so, what happens is when we find that we're ready to doubt what we see, the brain just figures it out for you, whether or not-

• 2:32Speaker 01

  With lies.

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With lies.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Using lies.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  As its building block.

• 2:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So have you ever seen a UFO?

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Um-

• 2:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Remember, "use" simply means unidentified.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  No, no, I know, yes. It's funny, because if I, because part of me wants to go like, "No, not really," but what I mean is, by saying that, I'm like, "I can identify everything in the sky."

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  So, in that sense, I can't. But I don't think I ever saw-

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, then you have seen UFOs, if you can't identify everything you've ever seen.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I don't think I ever saw a thing moving, and was like, "Oh, that's coming for me, I should get ready," what's my welcome speech. I, I, I feel like I haven't seen anything that was so unidentifiable, I wanted to blog about it. Let's just say that.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that means you've encountered some objects in the sky, that you're like, "I don't quite know what that is," but it's not so weird that I'm gonna freak out about it?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  I think it's like a bright planet, or something, or a shooting star. Like, if I didn't know about shooting stars, I'd definitely be more scared.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so you have some, sort of, a foundation for your observations. Did you ever have astronomy 101 in college?

• 3:29Speaker 01

  No, I went to a school where you decide your own major, and I didn't include astronomy.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's one of those kind of schools?

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I learned everything I needed from TV shows about outer space. So don't worry, I know plenty of science.

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what would you have to see for you to scare you, and then have you blog and tweet about it?

• 3:44Speaker 01

  I would have to have a thing fly up to me, maybe make a sound, ask me some questions, fly away. That's definitely, that's at the top of the list.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would work.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  And then something sort of just floating and glowing too much. Um, yeah.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, speaking of floating and glowing too much, one of the most mistaken objects for a UFO, well, it's not mistake, excuse me, if you don't know what it is, you simply don't know what it is. One of the most reported objects as a UFO is the planet Venus, in the sky.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Because it's so bright.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is so bright. Venus is 100% white- Cloud cover, so it's highly reflective.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  First of all, so it's as bright, it's like as bright as it can be as a planet.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  But it doesn't dart around, it just sort of sits there watching you.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, watch, if you happen to live near an airport and you accustomed to seeing airplane lights coming in at twilight or at night. And this would be Venus, and if you didn't know it was a planet, it would just be an airplane hovering. See, that's the thing, the fact that it's not darting around leaves people curious as to what it is because anything else would have come in for a landing a long time ago.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Of the UFO sightings, how many happen near airports? That would be slightly ludicrous.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I don't know that statistic, but another thing about Venus is we orbit the sun farther away than Venus does. And so if you're ever gonna find Venus in the sky, it's not gonna be all that far from the sun. You'll see it just before sunrise, in fact, these days it's up, for all any night owls out there, it's up just before sunrise and it's as bright as can be. And it's quite visible just after sunset. Now here's what happens, since it's in the twilight sky and it's bright, as it gets low in the sky, it could take on sunset colors the way the sun does. And so now you have a bright hovering light that has, a bright hovering object that has lights that resemble sunset colors. So you'd have orange and red and this sort of thing.

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You combine all this together and you get no limit of reported, of reportings of Venus being.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  So if aliens from Venus came here, it would be particularly confusing because we'd be explaining this phenomenon to them and they would be explaining where they were and.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, we'll keep it, we'll keep a special chapter on the UFO books for when Venusians visit us.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Exactly, the most confusing type of alien to visit.

• 6:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, you know, the word Venusian is, we kind of invented that after the fact and.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  After which fact? You make it sound.

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After the fact that if you are of Venus, the correct word for being of Venus is venereal.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Really?

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and the doctors got to that word before the astronomers did, yeah.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  I don't mind saying, oh, venereal, like, okay.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  But what, wait, and if, oh Martian, wait, why venereal?

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, that's the proper genitive form of the word Venusian, yeah, you'd be venereal.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  I can't wait to arrogantly say that to people as I talk to them at parties.

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because doctors had identified a disease common to lovemaking and Venus is the goddess of love and beauty and all that goes along with it. So, anyway, so Venus is a number one cosmic target for misidentified UFOs. That's right. And then the moon, the moon.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  By the way, cosmic target, great band name.

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, is that right? Okay.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Would be. Sorry. I'm saying you're coming up with things faster than you even know.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll take the compliment. And the moon is, has been, of course, we all know what the moon looks like, but suppose the moon is a crescent and only a little piece of the crescent sticks out from behind a cloud, so you don't see the whole thing and you don't know the moon is supposed to be there, and there's a little cloud areas growing around it, it can freak you out.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in fact, it happened to me. I was on a beach.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Were you listening to Pink Floyd high on a beach and the moon sneaks up on you?

• 7:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't listen to record albums that don't get their physics right. The dark side of the moon, there's no dark side of the moon, just so you know.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  You only listen to accurate physics albums. Like Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Accurate rock albums. So I just, as an example, I was once on the beach and I was, I saw a glowing object on the horizon and it didn't, I couldn't associate it with any terrestrial object. Of course, it was at night because then you see less well at night when you have, that's where most of your UFO sightings are at night, when you can least identify what it is you're looking at. And I saw something and I could not identify it and I was intrigued, pulled out my binoculars, which are never more than arms reach for me. There it was, it was the moon. And so I'm just simply saying, there are objects that can be out there, even if you're familiar with the sky, they can stump you, at least until you continue to observe. But it's not only cosmic objects, you also get sort of

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  meteorological objects, clouds, clouds. There are some beautiful cloud formations up there. Not just the puffy ones that make rain, there's some, particularly if you live-

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Thanks for being so scientific about that. I was like, but which ones make rain? Is it the puffy ones?

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The puffy ones.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Okay, good, got it. Move on.

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got the ordinary puffy ones, right? But then you have, there are clouds, there are orographic clouds, orographic clouds-

• 8:38Speaker 01

  So the two are puffy or graphic? And then weirdo clouds.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Weirdo clouds.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  They go back and forth.

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, and so, in fact, there was a guy who put clouds shapes on a scale.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and the big puffy cumulus clouds was cloud nine.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's where you say you're on cloud nine, you're on a big puffy.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Is that why?

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is why. We call them, if you're on cloud nine, it's a cumulus cloud.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not cumulonimbus, because then you'd be wet.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  No, don't be an idiot. Who would ever assume that?

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so the orographic cloud, and you have lenticular clouds, these are clouds that look like flying saucers.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you find them near mountains, and they're very high up, and they're these solid, take on this cylindrical shape, and they're isolated. And so watch what happens. The sun sets for you, but if you're high up, the sun sets later for someone on a mountaintop than it would for someone at the base of the mountain.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Like Moses, it's them.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This, we have a better explanation than that one. But, so what happens is, the sun sets for you, your sky begins to darken. This cloud is still lit up by sunlight. It is still lit up. And so it looks like it's glowing against the background sky, takes on the colors of sunset, bada bing, you've got a, you've got a.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Does it make that sound?

• 9:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll have to record it next time.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one of my favorite kinds of clouds is, are nocturnal clouds, which translates from the Latin to meaning, uh, nighttime aglow.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  I know.

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  I'm just kidding.

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was Latin one of the subjects you electively took in college?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. I know Latin and comedy.

• 10:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are clouds that are so high up, they can still be lit by the sun an hour after sunset. And occasionally, spaceships and, uh, missiles can leave a contrail that is so high up that they become these nocturnal clouds. And people then identify, and they say, oh, I saw this glowing thing in the sky, when they knew nothing's supposed to glow there.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you know about these objects, then you have a ready explanation for them.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  I can't wait to see that and then be like, no, no, it's not a spaceship. It's a cloud left by, uh, a human spaceship.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's also lightning. Lightning can do weird things. Lightning is, is electrical charges going from cloud to ground, uh, cloud to cloud. By the way, most lightning goes from the ground up to a cloud.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Is that true?

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was just saying.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  I know. I, I don't know why.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, it's not true. I just.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  We'll just. So opposite of what I was told earlier by school teachers who were misinformed.

• 10:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So much of reality is the opposite of what we're all told.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But so lightning, it actually creates a plasma around, it's basically a charged gas that glows. Remember those glow things you find in Spencer Gifts?

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yes, do I ever. I wanted one until I was probably thirty, thirty. It's only five, six years ago that I was like, meh.

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, then there are other things. For example, you'd have weird airplane designs if you happen to be near an air force base. That's testing unusual craft.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Like a triangle shaped spaceship.

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if there are secret experiments going on and you look up and it's something you don't recognize.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not gonna say, oh, that must be an air force experiment with a new airfoil. No, if you're prone to imagination, as so many of us are, you'll say, oh, it's an alien spaceship. Rather than the more terrestrial accounting for what it is that you see.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  So if an alien wanted to come here, if they just wrote US government on their ship, nobody would bother them?

• 11:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess not.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Is that, is that the point?

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  If they just covered themselves in a weird cloud.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This signal goes out at the speed of light if you're giving them ideas.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a flares do interesting thing. At daytime, it's just a flare. At night, it's this glowing thing in the sky. And there's a famous sighting of flare in Phoenix, Arizona, March thirteenth, nineteen ninety-seven. There was the fighter squadron from the Maryland Air National Guard. They dropped illumination flares as just part of an exercise at eight thirty PM, just after sunset, okay? And hundreds of people reported seeing a V-shaped UFO. Or either a formation of lights over the city and surrounding mountains. What your brain, what their brains did was connect them into a, into a single coherent object. And so rather than just say, I saw these lights, they said they saw a V-shaped UFO. Right. And so the urge to do that, they're balloons.

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, for me, the, the most hilarious UFO sighting was in Manhattan just recently. October, two thousand and ten. People saw glowing objects in the sky above Manhattan. Now here's for me, the funny part, I live in Manhattan, nobody ever looks up. So when they do, they have no experience to identify anything in the sky. I've had people say, what's that? Oh, that's just the moon. All right. They, they don't notice it. They don't see it. So New Yorkers are, can be easily enchanted by balloons that are in the sky. Now, these were, these were shiny Mylar surface balloons. And so. That accounted for some extra glow that they had in the sky. But this is, by the way, weather balloons also.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. To me, everything you've said so far, sounds like you're part of the cover up. Just so you know. Anyone who's like waiting for you to say that they're definitely aliens is getting more and more mad with each excuse you give.

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, we'll talk a little bit about Roswell and blimps.

• 14:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, welcome to StarTalk Radio. Welcome back, everyone. Eugene Mirman, before the break, said that the way the aliens can infiltrate us is if they paint US Air Force on their spaceships. And then we'll just say that they were...

• 14:19Speaker 01

  And then they'll be like, obviously, it's a US Air Force spaceship. It's a new...

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I worry, since this is a broadcast show, that signal is now going out at the speed of light, and you've given away our last hope of defense against alien invasion.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Yes, it was the last piece. It was like, oh, that's a great idea. And we'll put on wigs and dress like humans. That's all they were missing.

• 14:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, other things that can be mistaken, weather balloons. You don't, weather balloons are not commonly launched near urban areas or near airports, because they would tangle up your airplane. So, they're only in very secluded areas, and occasionally, unexpected air gusts can carry it into populated areas, and no one has any experience looking at a weather balloon.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Why was it, is it look insane?

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, it's just not something you've ever seen, unless you are like a weather balloon person, where you live where they do this sort of thing all the time.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Where you have the money to Google the word "weather balloon."

• 15:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so the Roswell incident, Roswell, you know, the entire economy down there is alien-based, not if you've ever visited the town. I've been there a couple of times, actually, went to all the museums. It's an entire alien economy. The street lamps have alien faces on them and things. And so that was later reported as, that crash, was later reported as a weather balloon. And when combined with some other experiments that had been done with sort of dummies, people now sort of remember that as sort of aliens and-

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Are there photos of the actual weather balloon?

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of fragments of it, yes. Yeah. Well, of the payload that was part of the weather balloon.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  The weather balloon exploded, is that-

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That I don't know. I don't know what was the consequence of that. I can tell you this, that if an alien really did come that far and it crashed here on Earth, that's not the alien I want to meet. That's like, anyone who can navigate better.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Right. You don't want to meet the alien that came here. Do you think that there are also liberal aliens who would try to stop the meaner aliens from taking over?

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The political alignments of aliens.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know who we have on the line? We have a good friend and colleague, Seth Shostak. He works at the SETI Institute. The SETI is the acronym for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Let's see what Seth has to say. Seth, how the hell are you, man?

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Just fine, Neil.

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for calling in to StarTalk Radio. Our subject tonight is sort of the physics of UFO sightings. Notice I said physics of UFOs, not physics of aliens, because there are all kinds of accountings for things we see in the sky. But you're sitting at like, at UFO Central there, because you're advertising what it is you're interested in. So what's life like in your job?

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Well, in connection with UFOs, what's life like? I mean, you know, we don't have enough time to really go into that, Neil. But let me just tell you something with relevance to the subject at hand. And that is that I get at least five phone calls and emails a day from people who are having difficulties with aliens in their personal lives. They send me photos, they send me videos of UFOs. They often think that we're doing the wrong experiment, trying to eavesdrop on alien broadcasts, because after all, they, like one-third of the population of this country, believe that the aliens are here.

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, but what do you tell them? Do you say there was no evidence? So, how do you handle this, these encounters?

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Well, I, I, you know, I listen to what they have to say, or I read what they have to say, because let's face it, it doesn't violate physics to go from one star system to another. Uh, it seems a little improbable that they would come all this way just for salacious experiments your mom wouldn't approve of, that, that, you know, but, on the other hand, you could say that's alien sociology, and we don't have a whole lot of data when it comes to alien sociology, so, nobody knows what they'd really be interested in, but, the, the, the fundamental fact is that it's truly an extraordinary claim to say that aliens have come, you know, hundreds of light years to visit Earth with nothing better

• 18:09Speaker 02

  on their mind than these unfortunate experiments, uh, and if you're gonna make that claim, then what I wanna see is the good evidence. So, I, I, I look at what they have to say, uh, and I look at the pictures, and I try and decide whether, does this, uh, does this suggest that we actually have visitors here?

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, so, what have you concluded? I guess I could guess, but I'm just wondering.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you know the answer. I, I'm not convinced. Look, I, you know, there, there are a whole bunch of arguments that could be made, uh, to suggest that this is, uh, you know, this is a bit unlikely. One thing you could ask is, why are they here now? Why now? And, and I ask people who think that the aliens are visiting Earth, you know, how is it that we're so fortunate that they've come to Earth just while we are alive to improve our social lives, or whatever?

• 18:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you realize that there, there are references to aliens, or at least unexplained sky phenomena, that goes far back as the Bible. Ezekiel had a vision of wheels in the sky, that had no other real account, and real, real alien, uh, fans would suggest that maybe he was bearing witness to that, and that's, you know, five thousand years ago.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, but five thousand years ago is, you know, uh, one, one, one, one millionth of the age of the Earth, so that's still now.

• 19:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that cosmic perspective on the timeline.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Okay, so, so, so that doesn't convince me, because what it requires is either one of two things. Either the aliens are always visiting the earth, so it really doesn't matter when you're born, you'll have the opportunity to have a unpleasant encounter with an alien.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the Men in Black scenario, they've just been around us all the time.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's that possibility, in which case, I would think that the evidence wouldn't be so equivocal, that, you know, that I would occasionally go down to the airport, and, you know, and the captain would come on and say, "Well, folks, we're gonna stay at the gate here for the next twenty minutes, because there's some unidentified craft in the area, and they haven't filed a flight plan with the FAA, so we're just gonna stay here." I mean, that doesn't happen to me.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm, okay.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  And I think if the aliens were really here, it would be like asking the North American natives, you know, fifty years after Columbus arrived, you know, "Do you think you're being visited by Spaniards?" It wasn't something just for late-night radio, it was, they knew, they absolutely knew. So, I can't believe that they've always been here. So, the only other possibility is that they're here now because they have some interest in one of our contemporary problems, they don't like, in fact, we have nuclear weapons, or they don't like what we're doing to the environment.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's the plot of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, yeah, exactly, but, of course, it doesn't make any sense, because they don't know any of that stuff, right? The only way they could know that Homo sapiens is creeping and crawling across this mortal coil is because of the high-frequency, high-power broadcasts we've been sending into space since the Second World War.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're sending into space at this moment.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Exactly, but, those things are only, you know, seventy light-years out at most, which means you can only expect to visit with aliens that are no more than thirty-five light-years out, because they need time to get "I love Lucy," decide they don't like the jokes, and then get into their spacecraft, which are limited to the speed of light, and get back to here just to haul you out of your bedroom.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so none of his squares with you?

• 21:28Speaker 02

  That doesn't square because the number of stars within thirty-five light-years is a few thousand. That's a small number in astronomy. I don't think any aliens know we're here. So I really stumbled across this problem of why are they here now?

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if anyone actually finds an alien, we'll take them to your office and then you'll have another argument.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Job security for me, Neil.

• 21:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Seth, thanks for calling into StarTalk Radio. Can we call you at another time if we have an urgent need?

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, if we actually get visited, we'll have some champagne with you on that one.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Okay, box them up and send them even FOB.

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. That was Seth Jostak, a friend and colleague at the SETI Institute. In where else could that be but California? So Eugene?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you seen any movies that have UFOs in it that you liked?

• 22:22Speaker 01

  I wish you could ask a broader question.

• 22:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, lots of movies, from Men in Black to the Star Trek serieses. The Last Starfighter. I still want to fight someone else's war somewhere far, far away. And protect the Earth from an eventual, but not that great costume-wise invasion.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know who I have clips of? You know who I have clips of? I interviewed, there's a UFO skeptic hunter.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  James McGah, director of the Grasslands Observatory in Arizona. And I asked him about UFO investigations and how he got involved in it. Let's see what he's got to tell us.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  I got involved originally because as an amateur astronomer growing up, you mentioned to someone you were interested in astronomy and he always asked you two questions. What's your sign? And do you believe in UFOs? And it got me interested in astrology and UFOs and studying it and realizing that there was simply no evidence for it and it was really a belief system that a lot of people had. And as a result, I started investigating and critiquing and analyzing UFO reports over the years.

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so what have you found? Because there's tons of them, right? I mean, there's no shortage of them.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Well, there's tons of reports, of course, but I've found that there's no evidence. Almost everyone thinks of the term UFO as being a spacecraft from another world. And that's what I mean. If you're referring to something that somebody sees as unidentified, then that's a different issue. What you have to do is, most people see something in the sky and they interpret it as an alien spacecraft. And there's no evidence that there are alien spacecraft flying around in the Earth's atmosphere.

• 24:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's where the belief system comes in, where the brain takes over the interpretation.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Right. And, you know, it's a very strong desire for humans to believe in things in the sky. This is nothing new. This has been around for thousands of years. And it's related to the whole concept of humans wanting to find meaning and purpose. And this revolves around superstition, magic, hope, salvation, and doom. And UFOs fit this bill perfectly.

• 24:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, I'm going to check in with my co-host, Eugene Mirman, and see what he thought about the movie that portrayed UFOs. We'll see you after the break.

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, welcome back, everyone. So, just before the break, we talked about some famous sort of alien movies.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the, I think one of the classic ones now is Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Because most of that movie was actually about UFOs. People saw lights in the sky and they didn't understand what was going on.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  And they were also making a lot of mounds.

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Is that the sound of a piper? Of like, someone with a flute flying in from Venerealia?

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Venarials coming in from Venus. So, you know what my big gripe about Close Encounters was?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  That it was factually inaccurate?

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. That they, if you remember the movie, they were decoding on a teletype, back when teletypes were the coolest thing.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 26:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This string of numbers.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would constantly get repeated from space.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one person says, I know what those are. It's longitude and latitude. That must be where the aliens are gonna land. And I thought to myself, longitude and latitude, is that the best you can come up with? It's a completely human construction. The coordinate system of our earth. It's not even in base ten, alright? It's in base sixty. Like, so what is this? If the aliens knew enough about our culture to, to give us longitude and latitude, they would know enough to like, learn our languages, just say, hey, we're coming down, we're gonna land to the left of, of, in-

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Of what you call Spain.

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I was just, plus, the ship comes down, it flew across the galaxy, it's a flying saucer, and what do they have? They have runway lights. What's that about? If you're a flying saucer, you don't need runway lights.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Hearing this, I both think that you're one hundred percent right, and also it would be unpleasant to see a sci-fi movie with you. Where you'd be like, that's not how beaming would work. Time travel's sort of not real.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you know, all the data from across the nation over the decades has been, uh, collected and investigated by the US government. Did you know about this?

• 27:12Speaker 01

  I, I, I would hope so.

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This was-

• 27:14Speaker 01

  I hope they're protecting us against-

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This was called Project Blue Book, very famous project. It ran for twenty-eight years, right from the depth of the Cold War, nineteen fifty-two, up through nineteen seventy, and they, they collected twelve, I got the exact number here, twelve thousand six hundred and eighteen reports of UFOs.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 27:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the people who are giving them this information, they're thinking, oh, the government wants to know if we're being visited by aliens. That's not what drove Project Blue Book, no.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Commies?

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Commies. It was like, what are the commies coming up to? And now you have a hundred million observers in our country, looking up, reporting on what it is they see. And this became this huge data, data gathering project. And so, other governments across the world are doing this as well. And, but there are other things, back then, there was like, the U-2 spy plane, just very different proportions from a normal plane, very big wingspan, to fly in the rarefied atmosphere at sixty thousand feet, where the thing would saw high up, it would be very hard to shoot it down. And another famous place is Area Fifty-One.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've heard about Area Fifty-One?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, isn't it a restaurant?

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not authorized to tell you what Area 51 is. Yeah. We were interviewing earlier James McGah, who is director of the Grasslands Observatory in Arizona. Oh. And as you heard, he's a former military pilot. So he knows all about what the Air Force might have been doing. And so let's see what he has to say about Area 51. Let's go.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Area 51 has never been called Area 51 by the Air Force. There is an area near Groom Lake in Nevada that people call Area 51. This comes out of the old Atomic Energy Commission areas when they divided up Nevada for nuclear testing. There is a facility there by the US Air Force. It's highly classified. It does a number of flight operations and other operations. I have flown in and around the area as an Air Force pilot. To the best of my knowledge, there are no aliens or no spacecraft there. It's all US technology that goes on there. But that's about all I can say about it.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's your response to people who are certain there's a cover-up? Because surely occasionally, if not often, the government would find a reason to cover something up if they judge it to be in the interest of security or public safety. So how do you reply to that?

• 29:33Speaker 03

  The government generally doesn't cover things up because if it ever comes out, they're embarrassed by the cover-up. Now occasionally, some individuals will say things or do things that they shouldn't do. The proper thing for the military to do when dealing with classified, and after all, there are reasons to keep secrets because a lot of classified information is stuff that is very dangerous and we don't want to get in the hands of our enemies. The term, "I will neither confirm or deny that." It's not covering anything up, it's simply not talking about it.

• 30:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there are people, though, who will then rely on the fact that they're not told what's going on there. That's where, in their own mind, they could place everything for which they don't have evidence?

• 30:17Speaker 03

  Right. And this goes right to the heart of conspiracy theories. UFOs are wrapped in conspiracy theories. And conspiracy theories are very attractive because they can explain complex social structures and problems, and they can simplify it and put a face on something otherwise that's very impersonal.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, another interesting fact about conspiracy theories is that to assert that there's a conspiracy, that's the battle cry for having insufficient data.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To actually, so wherever you're missing data, you say, "Oh, that's been covered up."

• 30:54Speaker 01

  I actually find conspiracy theories slightly infuriating because they answer things people don't really understand.

• 30:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By making stuff, by saying that...

• 31:02Speaker 01

  By claiming a bunch of random connections.

• 31:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and the connectivity comes about because they're saying the actual information that would connect it is hidden or held under wraps.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Though there is something funny about playing a pilot being like, "There's no secrets there." I mean, I'm sure he's telling the truth, but also, it's the same thing he would say if he was lying. That's what it means to cover something up. It's to come on the radio and be like, "No way, I flew all around that area, no aliens."

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I would know otherwise, yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Because I totally was let into all the secret rooms, even the alien ones.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And another interesting thing about how much credence we give into the account given by one observer or another, we tend to believe someone who's in uniform more than someone who is not. Or they say, "Oh, he's a pilot," or "He's an astronaut," or he's a...

• 31:45Speaker 01

  I often dress up as a doctor just so that people do exactly what I say.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right?

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, James McGah actually has some comments on what it is to be a trained observer. Let's go back to my interview with him.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  I've got over forty thousand hours looking at the night sky and thousands of hours of flying airplanes, because I was in the Air Force for a career Air Force pilot. And after doing all of that, I've never seen anything that I couldn't explain, but the point is, I have a background in looking at atmospheric phenomena, looking at astronomical objects, and being able to analyze what they are and interpret them correctly. And I've seen all kinds of phenomena, all the way from St. Emile's fire to ball lightning.

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  St. Emile's fire, that's that glow just before a lightning strike, is that right?

• 32:37Speaker 03

  Well, it's a static electrical charge that can build up on something moving, in my case, an airplane, and it can be quite beautiful, but also somewhat dangerous. Something that's often talked about is this idea of a trained observer.

• 32:54Speaker 03

  Somehow, the public believes that pilots and police officers are trained observers, but of course, they're not trained to look at the night sky. They're trained to do other things, and pilots and police officers make mistakes all the time in the way they look at objects in the sky.

• 33:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, how about astronauts? There's some one or two notable astronauts.

• 33:16Speaker 03

  It's the same sort of thing with astronauts. They're trained to fly a spacecraft, or maybe trained, if they're mission specialists, to do some task. They're not trained to look at the sky. They're not trained to look at the reflection of dust particles and be able to realize that that's what they're seeing that's coming off the spacecraft. They're not trained to see.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you mean to imply that all you have to do is train people to know what they're looking at, and then the UFO sightings will go away?

• 33:43Speaker 03

  In large measure, I think they would. The sightings would, barring the hoaxes, of course. If you think about in recent years, the most prominent have been what I call lights in the sky, the Phoenix Lights and the Stevensville Lights. And it's incredible that people would see these individual points of light in the sky, which were very bright, and then connect them together to make a larger object, connecting the dots in the sky.

• 34:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, then, this happened at night, when you have the least able to see things.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  Right. And they believe it's a UFO. They sincerely believe this, but they're simply incorrect in their interpretation of what they're seeing.

• 34:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, I can tell you this, as, when I was a kid, Eugene, I was an amateur astronomer, and we're looking up all the time. And I care when there are clouds in my way, so I'd studied meteorology just to help me find out when I can make my best observing. And I can tell you this, that among, in the community of amateur astronomers who are always looking up, and among meteorologists who are always looking up, the sightings of things in the sky that they cannot explain is lower than that in the general public. And it's got nothing to do with who's wearing a uniform.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Right. It's just based on who has the most amount of information.

• 34:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most amount of information. And probably the most famous case of a person in uniform or with some kind of cultural authority who is a big fan of UFOs or that we've actually that they're actually aliens is Edgar Mitchell, who's an Apollo astronaut.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he was a lunar module pilot for Apollo 14, the sixth person to walk on the moon. He spent nine hours on the lunar surface. He believes that UFOs are visitors from other planets. And, or at least some of them, and some...

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Even one is enough, if he believes that's one.

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  It's not like the question is, are there 50 UFOs?

• 35:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And one would, would work, would work. And he's pretty sure that the Roswell incident involved a real alien spacecraft. Now, he has not claimed that NASA is involved with UFOs, but NASA felt compelled to issue a statement that they do not track UFOs and don't share his opinions on this. We've got to take a quick break, but more StarTalk when we return.

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio. Welcome back. You know, Carl Sagan is famously, among many famous quotes we attribute to him, one of them is that extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence, which usually means more than just your eyewitness testimony. And I, I have my interview with James McGahah. James McGahah is director of the Grasslands Observatory in Arizona. He's an amateur astronomer, runs an observatory, a former Air Force pilot, and let's see what he has to say about evidence.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  What I'm not open to is unsupported claims, myth, magic, and superstition, anecdotal stories, and conspiracy theories.

• 36:46Speaker 03

  So what do you want them to bring forth? Well, if you- A dead alien? I mean, what do you want? No, if you want, if you want- What would satisfy you? To demonstrate that an a- this is an extraordinary claim, that an alien spacecraft is flying around in the Earth's atmosphere, and it may be landing and aliens getting off of it. If you want people to accept that in the rational scientific community, then you're gonna have to bring forth evidence. It's not enough to just say, "I saw it." As a skeptic, I'm open to the fact that if aliens exist in our galaxy, they could potentially build a spacecraft and fly here. It's highly unlikely, because it's so difficult, but it's not impossible.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  But the point is, there's simply no evidence that's ever occurred. But what would you count as evidence? I would count as evidence some artifact, a piece of metal from the spacecraft, some documented method that could not be hoaxed. Today, the problem with Photoshop and other things, it's just so easy to hoax a photograph, that photographs aren't, for all practical purposes, evidence anymore. Obviously, the best case would have the UFO land on the White House lawn, and aliens get out and go talk to the president. But that's not likely to happen. But short of that, you need something that didn't originate on the Earth.

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Eugene, what that means is, if you actually got a piece of an alien spacecraft- He wants a flight plan from-

• 38:14Speaker 01

  An alien ship. He wants to see an alien's flight plan that was authorized by the alien president. And then he'd be like, "Okay."

• 38:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it can't be, it can't have been sort of fals- uh, falsified, right? And, and you can't just bring something off the alien craft that's made of the same stuff as here on Earth. Because even if it were actually from the alien craft, it's lesser evidence for that than if it's something that would be of alien manufacture with-

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Right, so it wa- so he wants it to say like, "Made in space."

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ma-

• 38:41Speaker 01

  And you'd be like, "Well, why else would it say that on it if it wasn't made in space?"

• 38:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think that would not fully count as evidence.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  With a flight plan and a doctored photograph of an alien.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For example, there's a famous object called the Bob White object, featured on the TV show U- F O hunters and Bob White recovered a teardrop shaped metal object that he saw fall from the sky and analysis found that it was mostly made of aluminum and the thing is other objects that have claimed to be of alien origin implants that people remove from their body they found to be made of ordinary metals available here on earth and our most high tech metals are are very special alloys and you know when some hand that it was the handiwork of some intelligent civilization.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  It's not just tinfoil.

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not just tinfoil.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Not just tinfoil that they found in someone's stomach.

• 39:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so here's something interesting the people have seen that they've asserted that lights have not only appeared in the sky but have made abrupt changes in its movement.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Accelerating from.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  That's what I was describing is what would make me think something.

• 39:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, sure. So what's interesting if you are on board a spaceship that accelerated at the rate that some of these lights have moved have been reported to move you'd be a pile of goo at the end of the the back wall.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Unless they had thought ahead and inside the spaceship created space belts.

• 39:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Special in fact.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Seat belts.

• 39:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good science fiction writers have actually come up with this kind of solution and they're called inertial dampers and that's that's how you can go from zero to warp speed, you know, the speed of light in just a fraction of a second and not have to peel you off the back of the spaceship with a spatula.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Because inside the ship there's inertial dampers.

• 40:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's inertial dampers inside the ship and that way they can just stand there and not all roll back to the back of the ship and also what science fiction authors have come up with are things like, you know, warp drives. That's a famous way to get around in Star Trek. If you want to cross the galaxy, which is 100,000 light years across, even at the speed of light, that's not you're not getting there very fast.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  No.

• 40:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you want to warp that space so you can cross the galaxy during the TV commercial and still come back in time for what you need.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  What are you folding space?

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So what do you do? Exactly. So you fold space and then you you go through a tear in the space from one side to the other, kind of like a what a wormhole would be.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Right. That's how I would do it.

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  I highly recommend that to anyone building an alien spaceship or human spaceship.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we can think of, you know, what would happen if a spaceship was doing that, but before I invest that much brain energy in it, I'd rather just, you know, somebody just drag it drag an alien into the lab and I. Then you'll have me convinced, we're good, go on to the next thing.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Isn't there also the thought that aliens would be hostile? Isn't that?

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, Stephen Hawking would, sure, if they came to visit us, they would enslave us and suck our brains out. And that's not a new idea, although we always try to credit Hawking with new, you know, the War of the Worlds, what's that? But aliens from Mars coming down and just wreaking havoc on our culture and civilization. You know, I found a quote on the web from, from the famous physicist, Richard Feynman.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he was giving a talk at Cornell in 1964, and let's see what he has to say about aliens.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  I had a conversation about flying saucers some years ago with Lehman. Because I'm scientific, I know all about flying saucers. So I said, I don't think there are flying saucers. So the other, my antagonist said, is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impossible? I said, no, I can't prove it's impossible, it's just being unlikely. That, they say, you are very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible, then why, how can you say it's likely that it's unlikely? Well, that's the way, that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what's more likely and less likely, and not to be proving all the time possible and impossible.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  To define what I mean, I finally said to him, listen, I mean, that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the result of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence, rather than the unknown rational assets of extraterrestrial intelligence.

• 42:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was the one and only Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winning physicist.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Having thought about this even back in the 1960s. So we're coming to wrap up the show, Eugene. This hour has gone fast.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  It has, super fast, the speed of radio.

• 43:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me offer just a perspective here, that there's certain phenomena in the world that are rare. Maybe happen once a year, once a decade, once a millennium. Maybe you're not in the right place when it happens, so for you, it would happen once every 10,000 years if you live that long. So what's interesting to me is if you see something you don't understand, and it's because it's a really rare thing, it may simply be the weather doing something that it rarely does.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the planet's doing something you've never dreamt they could do.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  What you're saying is all spaceships are weird rain.

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying that there's a rare phenomenon you're trying to find here, that's all. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.