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

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/

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is StarTalk.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to StarTalk All-Stars. I'm Seth Shostak and you're 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. Yeah. Are you an alien, Ray? That'd be job security for me. And we also have Skyping in, a real expert on this stuff.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Thanks, Seth. Always great to talk to you. I always have a fine time talking sciency and skeptically and spacey things with you.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  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 have ever have heard about it, except for what happened in the summer of 1947. What purportedly happened there?

• 1:40Speaker 02

  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. Long story short, 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 meteorologist. ...of local sheriff who then called the local press and then it sort of turned into this whole big thing and the this led to the the story that well the initial story was

• 2:24Speaker 02

  the 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 there was a a project mogul which is a which is a top secret project that was designed to listen in for for Russian nuclear explosions for example from from great heights.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Well wait a minute here Ben I I I'm gonna back up just for a moment because I want to get this straight so it's it's something I just want to get the storyline here 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.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  It crashed near Roswell right and and 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.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  It was not the first time.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  Ah that I didn't know I thought this was the first one and they ran with it.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  No no no no this has this has had great marketing so so so I mean they had heard of it am I right Ben?

• 3:40Speaker 02

  Yeah yeah what's interesting is that is that what what sometimes people forget is that the Roswell crash and there was there was in fact Roswell crash it just wasn't aliens this happened shortly after the famous Kenneth Arnold sighting which basically put the the term flying saucer into the public lexicon so there's a you know at this point that you know flying saucer and aliens were very much in the public consciousness and so that's why that's one reason why when people found this this debris which which by the way you know the the later stories of finding bodies and and all these sorts of you know craft and things from extraterrestrial craft none of that was in the original eyewitnesses if you look at the original eyewitnesses.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  They described finding basically pieces of foil and sticks and lightweight, you know, materials 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 on to the Roswell myth decades later.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  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." And that was a little bit disingenuous of them, wasn't it?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  It was, it was. And again, it's basically a series of mistakes that has been latched on to 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. Now and then they start thinking-

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Are you shocked, Ray? You look shocked.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  I can't believe what Ben's saying.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  I know, I'm talking-

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Can I believe what you're saying? Okay.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Dr. Wilder. But no, so basically, 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, and because the thing, the Project Mogul was a top-secret project, and so the locals at the local Air Force Base weren't in on it. And so when the weather balloon explanation came down, that was what he thought it was.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. So, I mean, 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?

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Well, it's fascinating because essentially the Roswell incident, um, it, the, the, the whole story, uh, went dormant for, for decades. Uh, you know, between 1947 and say the, the, really the seventies and eighties, uh, nobody thought anything of it. There, 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, uh, when you had books coming out that were sort of reviving the Roswell story. And so people would, um, there was books, you know, by, uh, Phil Corso and others that would sort of, uh, and, and, and Berlitz as well, who would, who would basically revise the Roswell story and they would go and interview people who decades earlier would, would say, yeah, I was there. And then basically it

• 6:57Speaker 02

  was a, it's a really fascinating case of basically folklore in the making where, where again, if you, if you do the, the investigation, in the original research, you find out there's really not much to it. But, so the, the Roswell story in my mind is very much a folkloric story. It's a story of how, uh, you know, an idea, like, a kernel of a real event, again, something did crash outside of Roswell, but it wasn't all the other things that have become, become associated with it certain the last 20 years.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, look, I mean, if you're, 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?

• 7:31Speaker 03

  He doesn't love a good Denny's lunch.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  And, 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'd 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, but, well, what do you tell them? I mean, you say, well, that's right, they did that.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really depends on how sober the person next to me is. If it's a Denny's, really it could go either way. Certainly out here in New Mexico. You know, the thing is, you know, if the person that I'm talking to seems like they 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's 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

• 8:47Speaker 02

  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, you know, 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

• 9:30Speaker 02

  make sense to you?" I mean, that, you know, instead of sending radio signals, which, you know, said it might be a good idea to do, "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."

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. It doesn't sound terribly reasonable.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  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.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Hard to make crop circles in Roswell, I suspect. Desert crop circles. 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, A, 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...

• 10:18Speaker 01

  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. Thirty-three percent. It's a lot of people, it's a lot of people. So, you know, what's going on there? A few, yeah. Yeah, maybe it's a big conspiracy.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  And really, what I'd like to find out this episode is, is what are the addresses 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.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll meet up, I'll send it to you.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Perfect, thanks Ben.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Admirable expectations, Ray. Okay, let's go to these cosmic queries, you got?

• 10:53Speaker 03

  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'd be any logical reason to keep the info from us."

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Are they listening? I don't know.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Look, I mean, this is, this is, this is a perfect question, and, 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, 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, because people say, "Well, you know, it's because, you know, if, if people really thought that aliens were contacting us, then, you know, then it would be, there'd 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, that's not happened.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  So that, that explanation, "Well, there would be mass panic," no, no, no, no. A lot of you, like, as you said, you know, depending on what poll you look at, between, you know, a quarter and a third of them already think that. So, that clearly hasn't happened, they, they don't have an answer.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  They're still going to work it, every day, you know.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, but couldn't you make the argument, just because somebody might think that it happened, is very different from being presented with hard 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?"

• 12:33Speaker 01

  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 hiding. We have the aliens freestripped and stacked up at Area 51." If they say that, and 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 suppose 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"?

• 13:17Speaker 02

  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, you know, at Area 51, here's, you know, 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. So, 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.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're part of the cover-up, Ben.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's no way to argue with these people, because it's like, well, anything you say, so, you know, and... So 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 them wonder what's at Area 51. Who cares?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, they don't seem to care at Area 51.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  They really don't.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  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?"

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I might take that one, because in fact, there have been panels, 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 certainly, I know that this may offend you.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  Candy Crush? What are you talking about?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe that's it. I mean, none of the raw materials, the water, you know, the minerals, the precious metals, all that stuff. They've got all that wherever they are. And that's easy to show. So, they're not gonna come here just for that, right? You remember Avatar? They went for the unobtanium, but they actually tell you how fast their rockets are. I worked it out. Buying a pound of unobtanium 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.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Well, what if, on their planet, they ran out of materials and they're coming here to get our?

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you look, it's hard to run out of materials. 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 gonna break into your house, not for that big screen TV I know you have, right? 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, so.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  I've been hoarding copper in my basement.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Have you been doing that? Yeah, there are a lot of people in New York who do that.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Well, let me just add that, you know, one of the conspiracies, of course, about aliens is cattle mutilations. And the idea is that, 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, I just don't get it.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  This planet has very, very fascinating cow anuses. Let's be very clear about that, Ben.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Okay, fair enough. You're the expert. I'll defer to your expertise on cow anise.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  Yes, I am the expert in the cow anus field.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  No buts about it. We have time for another question here.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  All right. This is from Keelya Silves, a Patreon. 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 Chicalube asteroid hit."

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Chicxulub, yes.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  Chicxulub, yes. "Pretending for a moment that dinosaurs actually were capable of interstellar travel, would any evidence of their space program still exist?"

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Dinosaur's space program. All right, we've got a little bit of time, but not much. Ben, do you want to weigh in on the dinosaur's space program, or is that too short an answer?

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't... Wow. You know, I really got nothing on this one. I'm gonna throw it back to you, Seth.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  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.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Welcome back to StarTalk All-Stars UFO Edition. I'm your host for today, Seth Shostak, and we have professional comedian Ray Allen.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  Hey, I am a pro.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  All right. Joining as co-host today and Skyping into this studio, we have Ben Radford. Ben's deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer, and he's helping us delve into the topic of UFOs, 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, you know, kept it all under wraps. What do you think is the correct explanation for what happened to Roswell?

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Well, it's sort of convoluted story, but essentially what happened was that, again, there was this debris that was found, basically sticks and basically tin foil and light things like that, that later became, through later 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

• 19:08Speaker 02

  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. 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

• 19:50Speaker 02

  only when you start including these sensational stories of alien bodies and these, you know, mini dubious eyewitnesses that come forth decades later, that things get complicated.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  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?

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Essentially, yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  All right. All right. Now you know.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  Now I know. You want to do some queries?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Let's do some queries, yeah.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  Okay. Seth and Ben, this is from Michael Wojtas, or Wojtas. "Are there any theories considering alien presence on Earth that you find particularly entertaining, amusing, or maybe interesting?"

• 20:27Speaker 01

  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?

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Yes, I would say probably the, the, you know, on one level, you know, these, 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, the lore of UFO crashes and that. Uh, but probably the most interesting and amusing one is the one about the, uh, the day, the, the, the supposed, uh, base, underground base under Dulce, New Mexico, which is in my home state, in the northern part. And the story goes that there, that underneath this, this, this mountain range, uh, near the Colorado border, um, there is this top secret government base that, that, uh, and there's all these different levels. And so allegedly there's been these alien wars going on and there's still these incredibly

• 21:31Speaker 02

  fantastic conspiracies about, uh, all the stories going on. There's, you know, there's seven, you know, different, there's like seven different levels. On one level, they're making, you know, Bigfoot and chupacabras. On another level, they're having, you know, wars out of Star Wars. It's just fascinating, of course, there's no evidence that the base exists at all. And yet, uh, it's just, people will just go on and on about these, these crazy stories under Dulce.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Well, is it helping the New Mexico economy in any sense? I mean, all this, all this manufacturing going on there in northern New Mexico?

• 22:02Speaker 02

  It is, and it's, uh, it's, it's helping the local economy because, uh, last year there was, uh, there was actually a UFO conference at Dulce, uh, and they brought in speakers. I, I would have thought about going, but I, I was busy, uh, cause I would have loved to like, so I'm here, where's the evidence?

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  But, you know, I would not have been welcome there. So, uh, but yes, they, it does bring in some money for local economy. And of course, that's one of the reasons that a lot of these UFO stories are perpetuated. That happened in Aztec, New Mexico, it happened in Roswell, of course, uh, there's a, there's a financial incentive to, to perpetuate these stories.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  All right, I want to get to more questions, but you know, you, you prompted 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, they don't do anything except improve the financial prospects of towns in New Mexico.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  And occasionally, you know, apparently take the soft parts out of dead cattle.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Oh, well, there is that.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  The butchers.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  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?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Hmm. Ben?

• 23:41Speaker 03

  Ben?

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Well-thought-out, that's, that's, that's, that's an interesting question. I mean, there's so many hoaxes and UFOs. Well, the, the, the part that's tripping up is the well-thought-out part, because there's, there's all sorts, I mean, I can, I can name a dozen. There's the MJ12 documents, there's the, there's the, the alien mummies. Probably, in, in terms of the most elaborate, I'll just, instead of well-thought-out, I'll probably go for the, the, um, the Roswell dummy, uh, story that, that happened in the 1990s, when, of course, there was that video footage, well, film, apparently, of the, the alien autopsy. This was later sold, if I'm not mistaken, to Guccione Penthouse Magazine, who paid,

• 24:24Speaker 02

  I don't know, $2 million for it. Um, hope he kept his receipt. Uh, later turned out, of course, to be, to be faked, uh, but it was, you know, for a while, it was, it was, it was a Fox special, so there you go. Um, so that was probably, in terms of the most interesting elaborate hoax, is probably the alien autopsy.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is why I got my Penthouse subscription, for that story. That's why.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Really?

• 24:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  I, I, I believe you, Ray.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  Uh-huh.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Okay, let's go to another question then.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  Here's a fun, uh, here's a fun question from Marcus Sparza. Uh, what one song would you choose to play to aliens, introducing them to Earth?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that's an interesting question because it presupposes that the aliens, A, can hear and B, have music.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  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?

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  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.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  What if they don't have ears? What if they, everything is telepathic?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, how does that work there, Ray?

• 25:39Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, Seth, what if they're telepathic?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, okay. I mean, you could, you, if they're telepathic, I mean, why aren't they communicating with me now? I mean, that would, I could get a raise for that.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  Because we can't, we have no telepathic powers.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right. That's right. Well, you, you, you know, there is something called physics, but let's, let's not even worry about all that.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  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, okay, it's some sort of religious practice.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  I think we should play them some Taylor Swift. That's what they greet them with, with Taylor Swift or Anne Murray.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  We have sent music to the heavens. NASA in 2008 actually sent a Beatles song to the North Star.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  Is that right?

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, they haven't replied yet, but it hasn't gotten to them yet either.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  Which song was it, do you know?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Across the Universe, yes. Yes, in fact.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  Oh, appropriate.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Did you know that, Ben?

• 26:40Speaker 02

  I did not know that.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, they haven't responded yet, but, but that star is 400 light years away, so it'll take a while.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Okay. Lay it on us, Ray.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  All right. Uh, let's go with, why do, 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?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  God, that's not very kind.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  Not nice, but Dave is, it's a legitimate inquiry from Dave.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they never take diplomats or, you know, scientists.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  Never. Never, a PhD.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Guys with cameras.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  A PhD candidate, never, no.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  It would be good if they took guys with cameras. Ben, is there a reason for this?

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Well, I can think of a few. They're not polite. I think probably the best answer is that that it fuels the whole conspiracy theory. Because again, as you know, part of the idea behind the conspiracy is 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 peoples, like, you know, that the government elites, the scientists, the officials, they have a lockdown on this technology and, you know, and they're gonna... 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

• 28:01Speaker 02

  to sort of keep the common folk, 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 UFO alien mythology. You know, if the aliens abducted Hillary Clinton or another world leader, 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,

• 28:42Speaker 02

  in the White House in 2016." So, that'd be my answer, is that that particular motif is embedded in UFO folklore and alien mythology.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  I gotta 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, is so emotion-laden. I mean, if you say, "No, I don't think that the 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, or any of that sort of stuff, that they know something that's really important that those nerdy, pointy-headed, you know, jacket-wearing academics down at the local university don't know. And it's empowering. I think there's something to that.

• 29:35Speaker 03

  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.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  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 it's 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.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  They were called your parents, right?

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. All right, let's hit on that here.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  All right. Uh, ba-ba-ba. 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?"

• 30:23Speaker 01

  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 this

• 31:08Speaker 01

  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.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  But, you know, you'll read about it in the checkout line long before you see it in the New York Times.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  If I was standing next to you, I'd go right on Snapchat.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go. See?

• 31:27Speaker 03

  Yep. I would tweet, I would Instagram it.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  People think the Men in Black would show up. You know, that'd be interesting. At least that means there's budget for that.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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."

• 31:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's actually, that's a pretty good idea. I think we ought to do that.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  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?"

• 31:54Speaker 01

  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.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, slight Boston accent. He had a suburban Boston accent.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Is it suburban? Okay.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, "Live long and prosper." Yeah.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  I see. Okay, you could be a Vulcan.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, what was the question again? Oh, how do we communicate with them? Well, look, nobody knows. Nobody knows. Obviously, we don't. I mean, we forget the language because, you know, 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. Yeah. Do we have, we have time for a real quick one?

• 32:52Speaker 03

  Uh, real quick one, from Antonio Rodriguez. If humans visited another civilization, could they be mistaken for monsters?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  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, they thought maybe he was some sort of monster. So, who knows?

• 33:20Speaker 03

  If my ex-girlfriend visited another civilization, she would be considered a monster. Absolutely.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Really? Gosh. All right. That's, well, complimentary enough. All right. Well, we have to take another short break on this, 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. I'm your all-star host, Seth Shostak, and co-hosting with me in this studio is professional comedian Ray Allen. Hey. Yeah, 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?

• 34:07Speaker 03

  All right. Ellie Mintz writes, is it more plausible aliens would be future humans who figured out time travel rather than travel the universe?

• 34:16Speaker 01

  All right. So, they're, they're actually us, they're not alien beings, that kind of thing. That happens a lot on TV.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  Does. Ben, what do you think?

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Happens a lot in the universe, Ben?

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I'm not a big fan of time travel stories. Uh, I, I, part is just because I'm so skeptical that I, the, the, the contradictions pop out at me. So, uh, I'm gonna have to say that the likelihood of, of, of people mastering time travel is uh, far less than, than it is of, of mastering intergalactic travels. I'm gonna say no.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, no. And, and also there's a motivation. I mean, if you had time travel, would you come back to 2016? I mean...

• 34:53Speaker 03

  Well, it depends. If they're, if they're near 95, 80, then maybe 2016 seems quaint and charming, the way I would view, you know, 1955.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. It wasn't that quaint and charming, I can tell you. All right. Been there, done that.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  All right, maybe I go to 1869.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, okay. So you don't like this Terminator dealy where, you know, the, the aliens are just us. Yeah, no.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  It's bad news.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  That, that's, you know, I think that's cheating the universe. They couldn't make some other species.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think you might be right. Uh, Yvain273, 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, uh, finger-like extremities, do you think their number system would be eight-based?

• 35:38Speaker 01

  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.

• 36:00Speaker 03

  Or Twitter.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but eight actually works better in the binary number system than 10 does.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  And so I think that by the time they get the computers and start building smart machines to take over their jobs, uh, they would, they might do better with, with, uh, four on each hand instead of five. That's my opinion, but, you know, I, I don't think there's anything magical about five on each.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  Solidamian, that's an interesting name. Solidamian asks, uh, do you think there is an intergalactic law that prohibited other live forms to communicate with us?

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, are we being boycotted, you mean? Are they deliberately keeping quiet? This is sometimes called the zoo hypothesis, actually, that, you know, they know we're here, but they're, they're just holding back and not portraying themselves. What do you think of that, Ben? Does that strike you as likely?

• 36:47Speaker 02

  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, and 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, you know, I don't think that that's, I don't think that's likely. I mean, you know, you want to find out, assuming that the aliens are curious enough to, you know, to seek beyond their local environment, then why wouldn't they go ahead and take the extra step and contact us?

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It doesn't make any sense to me, too. I mean, and also, by the way, they all have to agree on that. I mean, maybe these aliens over here say, "Oh, we're gonna keep quiet." And those aliens over there say, "Hey, look, it's an export market. Let's get in touch with them."

• 37:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  So...

• 37:38Speaker 03

  It's an export market.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  We got cow anuses to sell, man.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  I can get them for you wholesale.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  This is from Steve Andrews. "How likely is it that an alien life form is so similar to us, we wouldn't notice that they were already walking among us?" That's sort of like the movie Cocoon.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, they save on costuming that way, right?

• 38:01Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Everybody looks like us. Right, indeed, that they adopt our human form. I mean, I don't know, 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?

• 38:16Speaker 02

  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, you know, environmental constraints of Earth and elsewhere. So, the idea, I mean, I guess you could have sort of like the character on DS9, the Renee A. Bourgeois character, I forgot his name, that would, Odo, that could sort of be whatever. But, no, I think that 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.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Then let me elaborate on this tack 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. We have something about our behavior..." Is unpalatable to them. What do you think about that to me? Well, what do you think about that?

• 39:23Speaker 02

  I, 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. Sorry. Let's just apologize to 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.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  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.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe the aliens were gonna show up and they're like, you know, I don't want TMZ at the landing site. So forget it. I'm taking off. 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."

• 40:24Speaker 01

  I see. Well, all right. They got a bit scatological. Ben, do you have some insight into alien motives here?

• 40:33Speaker 02

  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.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Aren't you full of yourself?

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Well, look, I mean, again, this gets back to the bigger question of why in the world would, living in the world, why would, why would they come all this way to, you know, to what, to probe hillbillies, hillbillies and to make, you know, make, you know, circles and wheat? I mean, it just doesn't, it just doesn't make sense. I mean, of course, if they're gonna contact us, Seth well knows that they're much more likely to use a method that's, you know, conserve energy, it's gonna convey much more information. And I just, 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,

• 41:29Speaker 02

  there's no real reason why they would be, you know, they be shooting around our skies and not go ahead and land on the White House lawn and announce themselves.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Good answer. Uh, and what a great question from Repeat. Uh, can, 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.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  The Black Knight Satellite?

• 41:55Speaker 03

  No.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Is that like Planet Schultz? Have you ever heard of the Black Knight Sat-? No, nobody's ever heard of the Black Knight. Maybe that's the whole idea, that nobody can handle a Black Knight Satellite.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  Not that we can discuss.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess it's one of those black projects.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  It's like a Martin Lawrence movie, the Black Knight Satellite.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Well, you know, there's a storm brewing, we're going to the lightning round, right? So I'm gonna just grab this bell.

• 42:17Speaker 03

  You got your bell?

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I can get my luggage taken care of.

• 42:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  All right. All right.

• 42:21Speaker 03

  You ready, Seth?

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  There we go. Uh, Richard Lapierre asks, "To whom does one report a sighting?"

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Oh, well, if you've seen a sighting and you think there's something credible about it, you, 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?

• 42:44Speaker 02

  No, that's, that's, that's my go-to. I mean, you know, sometimes if there's, if there's a sighting that, that's like in my area, I may try and investigate it, or, or, you know, get Robert Schaefer, another investigator, to do it, but typically, the answer is, call MUFON and, uh, if, uh, you know, see what they say.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  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?"

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Well, it's kinda hard to answer. Uh, I, I don't know why, if there's seven and a half, I mean, the guy knows it to like a couple of percent, that he knows that distance.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  Jay has gone 7.2 miles down, and he hasn't gone the whole seven and a half.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's got a deep mace, a deep basement. Uh, I, you know, if you go that far down, the conditions are actually not so good. I mean, it's, it's, it's very hot, the, the rock is getting soft, I mean, you're in the mantle of the Earth, and, uh, if there's somebody down there, I don't know what they're gonna eat, 'cause you don't have any sunlight to grow anything.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Or to feed your cows.

• 43:38Speaker 03

  Twinkies.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sure. Let's go to another one.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Uh, 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?"

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Okay, well, Ben knows about the artifact situation.

• 43:56Speaker 02

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

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, too bad. Nothing for the museums yet.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Sorry, Uyocha. 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.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  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.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  Well, and those are also older.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but some of them are not older. I mean, the Mayan pyramids are not older, right?

• 45:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. I never heard anybody claim that, well, okay.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Well, no, but they do. They do. Except for the Mayans, of course.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  Ryan Milborn writes, "How long have you known that Neil is an alien?"

• 45:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  Okay, uh, ba-ba-ba. 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 Den Chon Shen Chi.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. What do you think, Ben?

• 46:01Speaker 02

  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. The idea that, you know, 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,

• 46:42Speaker 02

  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 1950's films.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Okay. We have time for maybe one real quick one, yes.

• 46:59Speaker 03

  Grumpy Crumpy in Texas. If you were part of an advanced alien civilization, would you want to visit Earth? Why or why not?

• 47:06Speaker 01

  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.

• 47:18Speaker 03

  If you were part of an alien civilization...

• 47:20Speaker 01

  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 Allen.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  Hey, great to be here!

• 47:39Speaker 01

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