The Infinite Monkey's Guide To… Talking to Aliens

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BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

Hello, I'm Brian Cox.

I'm Robert Ince, and this is the Infinite Monkey's Guide to, well, we're looking back over the past 27 series, or maybe 28.

or could be 34.

Frankly, it doesn't really matter.

Well, it does, you know.

Well, it doesn't, because our regular listeners will know that whenever we've done shows about cosmology, you'll have moments where people go, well, of course, we believe there's 200 billion or possibly 400 billion.

So if you're allowed to be out by 200 billion, I think being out by like five or six

is not much, is it?

And also, actually, because this is a podcast and it might not be listened to in sequence, it might be listened to in 10 years' time.

Or it might never be listened to at all, and then philosophically, we don't even know if it exists.

Just use an N, N, because it stands for an integer.

This is the Invincibles Guide 2, where we look back over the past N series where N is an integer.

Now, of course, when we're talking about making contact with extraterrestrial life, a keyboard player like Brian has a natural advantage if Steven Spielberg is correct, and we need something like a Moog synthesizer to talk to the aliens.

You remember that?

That's kind of meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.

That's how I'd do it.

What tune would you pick, right?

So you're there, you've got one of your many, many keyboards out, and what are you playing?

Born 3.

Oh, yeah, Borne 3 is very good, actually, yeah.

Did that on Morns Remount Space as well.

I think Born 3 would be quite welcoming.

Say it was an alien threat, so you actually wanted to shoe them away.

What would you play then?

Books, Fizz?

Would you?

Making your mind up.

That's quite good.

You still got those skirts, by the way.

Back in 2009, we were joined by astronomer Seth Szostak, someone who spent his life searching for signals from an extraterrestrial civilization.

This is what's called the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence because there are plenty of people who are looking for the aliens, as you've already alluded to, right here on planet Earth.

We're not doing that.

We're trying to find them at home by eavesdropping on signals, just what Jodie Foster did in the movie Contact.

And so so we wield these big antennas, radio telescopes, we point them at nearby stars, we try and pick up on signals that might be headed our way from somebody else.

Simply on the basis of the fact that even we, only 100 years after really inventing radio or perfecting radio, we can already make transmitters that could reach the stars with their signals, very strong signals at the distances of the stars.

This was realized half a century ago.

So some people said, look, if there are other societies out there that are at least as clever as the

residents of Clapham Junction or something, they may may be broadcasting signals that are washing over us all the time.

Why not look for them?

And that's the fundamental premise of this experiment.

Seth, what makes us think there is intelligent life out there?

Well, I think it just boils down to the numbers, Robin, really nothing more than that.

I mean, on the basis of data that astronomers have accumulated in, say, the past dozen years, now you can say that the number of planets in our Milky Way galaxy is on the order of a trillion.

That's a million million, right?

So if only one in a million of those guys is somewhat like the Earth with liquid oceans and thick atmospheres and all the salubrious ingredients that might lead to something as clever as you are, then that still leaves a million planets in our galaxy.

And if you don't like your fellow galaxians, hey, there are 100 billion other galaxies we can see with our telescopes, and they each have a similar number of planets.

So it seems rather likely we're not the only game in town.

We've looked carefully at only fewer than a thousand star systems.

It's such a tiny, tiny bit of cosmic real estate.

I mean, no one should be surprised we haven't found anything yet.

But it turns out that the speed of the technology is increasing exponentially.

It means that the speed of the search actually is doubling every 18 months, turns out.

So that means the next two dozen years, we'll check out maybe a few million star systems.

And at that point, I bet everybody a cup of coffee that we'll find ET.

Since that episode was broadcast, we have, of course, been communicating with hundreds of intergalactic species and also the people who live inside Venus.

Hang on a minute.

That's what we would love to say, that in the 15 years that's passed, that we've had all this communication.

It's going to get clicked out and used on the internet.

I know, that's great.

That's exactly what we want.

We need more conspiracy theorists.

There's a lot of them.

We're really missing out that market at the moment.

But if we could have spoken to Venusians, anyone out there, if you've not heard it or seen it, there is the most wonderful clip of Patrick Moore, most famous for the sky at night, a wonderful popularizer of astronomy, talking to a man who talks back to him in Venusian.

It's brilliant.

It really is great, isn't it?

It's wonderful.

So, couldn't you tell us how are you going to speak to them?

I will.

Anyway, the exciting news is that since that episode was broadcast back in 2009, the Hubble Space Telescope has helped scientists learn there are actually more like two trillion galaxies in the universe.

Double what Seth Szostak and company have predicted.

But we still haven't made contact with any alien life forms on any of them.

We wouldn't have expected to, would you, from a different galaxy?

No, it's going to be tricky.

Many of them are beyond what's called the cosmic horizon, though.

So when you say beyond the cosmic horizon, right?

So that...

Now, many of those galaxies are receding from us faster than the speed of light because of the expansion of the universe.

And so if a signal was emitted now from one of those galaxies, it would never reach us.

But and then we get to the point where all the galaxies are so far apart we can't even witness other galaxies.

I mean

it'll be after our time, or at least the time on the planet Earth.

Yeah, they'll fade away.

Ultimately, in a universe like ours, it's accelerating in its expansion if that expansion carries on forever which we think it may do then all the galaxies recede they just fade away essentially on the horizon and uh you would never be able to contact them even in principle

so this it negates the point of this episode really from an existential perspective it negates the entire point of the existence of anything really it's all a waste of time isn't it if time exists yeah but anyway the search continues and some of our guests guests weren't really happy with that search continuing because they didn't like the kind of life scientists might be looking for.

So here's comedian Conan O'Brien and Katie Stack Morgan from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Is there any chance that for the impatient that Perseverance may see some kind of smoking gun that there was life on Mars?

So we often talk about the proverbial Martian dinosaur bone or the little green men, that type of thing.

But our expectation is that if life arose on Mars, it it was of the microbial variety.

And it's actually quite hard to preserve microbes in rocks.

And so, the kinds of things that we look for when we're searching for ancient life on Mars or even here on Earth is how those microbes interacted with their environment.

What fingerprint did they leave behind in the rocks based on how they responded and reacted to the environment?

Well, I just have to cut in and say that I speak for the average Joe on Earth who grew up on science fiction movies, and we are hungry for a real ET, an alien.

And when you guys tell us it's going to be one cell or two cells,

if you have a powerful atomic microscope you can see it, that does not fill the bill.

We have all grown up on these movies and we are hungry and I think if you want this funding to continue

Which I think is at the core of all the work we are doing here, we've got to come up with an alien that says gleep glorp and has a ship and has a gun

that's trying to destroy our world, but we destroy him before he can destroy us.

That's what we need.

Enough with the one cell, two cell.

It's getting us nowhere.

In terms of all the movie space aliens, TV space aliens we were brought up with, which is the one that you think would most help funding at JPL?

There's an episode of the original Star Trek.

where Kirk goes down to the planet and he has to do battle with a, I think it's called a Gorn.

Is anyone here going to help me with this?

Really?

A bunch of rocket scientists.

And no one's seen the original

Star Trek.

Okay, what a damning indictment of this institution.

Anyway, it's essentially an actor in a rubber suit that looks like a lizard and they fight each other on the planet and then Kirk figures out how to assemble a crude TNT and he uses that to defeat the alien.

That's the alien I think Americans are looking for.

We want some kind of lizardy thing that is stronger than a human and has technology that's far beyond our own.

That's what we need.

I'm feeling compelled to defend the single cellular organisms now.

I mean, what's more frightening than a single cell that is suddenly not just a single cell?

I mean, there have also been movies about that.

So

I mean, first of all, and I did not mean to offend you in any way, Katie,

and I apologize.

My qualm with you is mostly about what do we do when we run out of names for these roaming machines on different planets.

Because when I heard the name Perseverance, I thought they're they're running out of names.

Perseverance just implies, well, I know I'm not the best, but I'm going to try.

I'm going to really try my best.

Aw, perseverance.

When we find it, or if it finds us, what will extraterrestrial life look like?

Now, the movies have generally had it looking like a kind of distorted version of us, bug eyes or snake eyes with a hankering for eating whole hamsters, or David Bowie.

Though Carl Sagan imagined a life on the gas planet Jupiter where floaters lived, which is kind of somewhere between a bellow and a hot air balloon.

They're the most wonderful images.

Did you mean to say that the alien had a hankering for eating David Bowie?

I wasn't clear enough there.

No, the different forms of aliens imagined are bug-eyes or snake-eyed.

The snake-eyes one have a hankering for whole hamsters, or sometimes the aliens look like David Bowie.

Oh, yeah.

So I didn't mean to say that there are aliens that will eat David Bowie.

Yeah.

Well I'm not saying that.

I think he will be indigestible because I think he took on so many forms in his life that somehow he would irritate the stomach or whatever form of lining an alien would have.

Greg Proups also had an idea of what he wants aliens to look like as he told Paul Provenza when we took Infinite Monkey Cage to San Francisco back in 2015.

I was pretty hot on the green girl in the early Star Trek program, the one that Shatner dated.

I thought, if aliens are going to do a sexy dance and wear a little tunic and be green, it's on.

Let's go where no one has gone.

Specifically.

Specifically green.

If you want to go to a cold, inhospitable world where there's only protoplasmic microbes and no suggestion of intelligence and sensitivity, you can come to a meeting with me in Hollywood any day you like.

and meet a room full of people who are so hateful that no life can exist around them.

And no idea can escape their vacuum of inactivity.

and stasis.

If you come up with something creative in a meeting in LA, it is immediately covered with a permafrost that sends it back in to the center of the earth so that the same thing can be done over and over again.

I have an idea for a zombie program about vampires.

That meeting on Wednesday went terribly, didn't it?

Paul, there were two people who applauded the sexy green dancer from Star Trek.

Now let's see if you can up the ante in terms of your growing up, your childhood, the images of extraterrestrial life.

I'm big on Ewoks.

I love me and Ewok.

What, in the same way that he likes.

Oh, that's got more.

The Ewoks him up.

That's good.

In the same way he likes the green girl.

Hey, I don't judge you.

This is San Francisco Day.

If you're going to have an alien,

Ewoks, they look like they could go in the cat box.

That looks like, that looks like a manageable alien life form that I could have around the house and, you know, leave some food out.

The big question is: if we could communicate with aliens, what would we say to them?

Hello.

Hi, Hiya.

Going anywhere nice for your holidays?

Oh, you're invading here.

I'm so sorry.

Landon.

In 1997, two golden records were placed on the Voyager spacecraft.

And I mean, it's just fascinating the way that the music as well, as well as the images, were chosen for the golden record card.

Yeah, I think they had about two weeks or something, if I remember.

It was a tiny amount of time that NASA said, yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Do it.

And so they had to encode in this very analogue, limited way, images of Earth, the sounds of Earth.

Our first potential contact with aliens on this record.

The mixture of images, hopefully, I've not found out if they're online.

There is a book actually all about putting together the golden record, and you have these fascinating images of kind of civilizations and wildness.

And my favourite image is a man doing a painting while his wife appears to toast a crumpet under a bronze chimney.

And it's just this like kind of so that the aliens are going to go, oh, yeah, they seem very sophisticated with that.

This Airbnb looks fantastic let's invade the planet earth now back in the old days the bbc didn't think science was funny enough on its own which i think is ridiculous because i think science is filled with the utterly preposterous great comedies like the andromeda strain yeah exactly which when people see the film of the andromeda strain without the laughter track that was originally on it they think it's quite a moody piece it was yeah

yeah but for some reason they didn't think the whole universe had enough humor in it without also having a sketch team they were a brilliant sketch team in fact i wish they were still still going.

They were called the Pros from Dover.

And if you got that reference, give yourself one more point, you move through to the next round.

Here are the pros from Dover, imagining the discovery of that golden disc.

Commander Zagod.

Ah, Zimsmapzozab.

We have recovered a data storage device from the crashed space vehicle.

Can you retrieve the data?

Commander, this device is a primitive one.

The information is contained within a groove etched onto the surface of this golden disc, and can be retrieved only by placing a tiny pointed object in the groove and rotating the disk.

Most primitive Our methods of digital storage would frighten and amaze them.

If only this species knew that we are able to store over forty pieces of music in a device no bigger than that tree, it seems we will never retrieve the data from this primitive disc.

Unless...

Hmm?

Commander, with our flat, circular heads and rotating necks.

Yes?

What do you...

By Zulza, Marthon, you are right!

Put the disc on your flat rotating head.

Like this?

Yes, yes, you see?

The hole fits perfectly over your orientation prong.

You are right.

And now, a tiny pointed object, you say.

Yes.

Of course I have it.

Keep still while I pull my trousers down and place my mighty trudge nil in the groove.

Of course, your trudge nil fits exactly in the groove.

Commander, is it possible that this is how the disc is meant to be played?

Yes.

Now rotate your head.

As if scanning the horizon for flying reptiles?

Yes.

Good.

Good.

That is it.

Fascinating.

This piece of music is advanced!

Unlike anything we've heard before!

And now I will slap my thumbbles together!

Commander!

This dope is the bomb!

Yeah!

John, if by some horrendous mistake, I suppose, you were put in charge of the message to the alien civilizations,

what would you you put on it?

I mean it sounds funny, but it is a difficult choice.

It would be a sort of apology, I suppose.

You know, we'd say, you know, we really, really tried our best and our intentions were good, but unfortunately our brains went wrong.

Now, you may have noticed there, the voice of John Ronson

Lanes.

Did they think it was John Ronson?

No, they thought it was me.

Yeah.

They thought that the guest hadn't turned up.

So I was sat there running between microphones going, oh, hang on a minute.

When I worked with Frank Sidebottom, one of the most exciting things was when we did hit the north.

And now here's Brian Cox.

When I worked with the band Dare, one of the most exciting things we did was work with Frank Sidebottom.

I think that was mainly people in Guildford complaining that it appears that there were two people from the north and there was no way of knowing the difference between them.

It was all absolutely packed with a sense of whippet and jam.

But at the same time...

Strolling across the cobbles looking for muffins.

Yes,

I found a muffin there under an old wheelbarrow.

So we've got a world where people are uncertain if two northerners are talking how to define between them.

I still don't know how we're going to define between when a human's talking and an alien's talking.

It's going to be very, very confusing for everyone.

Anyway, finally, we discuss the music on the golden discs and Carl Sagan's reason for only one piece by Bach with mathematician Culver Roney Dougal and comedy producer John Lloyd.

So mathematics is universal.

We would expect, would we, if we found some civilization out there tomorrow, that they would share an understanding of certain things, pi, for example, these numbers, E.

Yeah, and for example, when we sent out the Voyager space probes and there was a little um engraving on them, which was designed by Carl Sagan, and there's a picture of a man and a picture of a woman not holding hands in case aliens thought they were one single creature with two arms and four legs.

What I thought was also wonderful about that is I think the uh the images, the man and woman, had no genitalia in case it offended the aliens.

Honestly, it's really

got it.

The men have genitalia, but the women may have a secret.

That's actually true, yeah.

Speaks of the US in the 70s, doesn't it?

But together with all of that, we sent them some examples of our kind of maths.

We sent the incredibly deep expression two times three is six, and we sent them two plus three is five on an understanding that if they had any ability to understand this thing that had just crashed landed on their planet at all, they would understand that we were mathematically numerous and they would have the same kind of maths as we do.

I love the story that Douglas Adams told told about that.

They sent some music as well, a range of human music, and somebody suggested sending a bit more bach because it was so nice.

And they thought, no, because that would look like showing off.

In the next episode, we'll hear from two Vickers and a Theologian and Billy Bragg.

That again is one of those great openings to a pub gag, as far as I know.

There we go.

There's two Vickers, a theologian, and Billy Bragg, walk into a pub.

They have a lovely time.

All the episodes we took clips from are available on BBC Sounds, and you can find all the details of those in the program description for this show.

In the infinite honky cage.

Till now nice again.

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