May 23, 2014 • 40 mins
Could alien life forms really contact human beings? How would they do it? Is it possible that other humans could intercept the message -- and keep it secret? Listen in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, everyone,
Welcome back to the show, The Big Show. My name
is Matt and I'm Ben, and that's our super producer
(00:23):
Noel behind the behind the boards are the keys. Yeah,
we're just gonna point to him. He's right over there.
So if you have a very specific form of probably
non existence synesthesia, you can feel our fingers moving and
it probably you know, feels the way lavender smells or something.
I don't know. Yeah, it feels feels very very nice,
I'm assuming. So it's interesting that our segue or our
(00:46):
banter at the top of this episode concerns sensation, right,
because that is one of the abiding universal characteristics of life.
It's the ability to sense something right from your outside
environment and then in some way to respond to it.
(01:08):
But when we when we think about what life actually is.
Oh and spoiler alert, I've forgotten, Matt, what's name of
this this episode of this search for extra terrestrial life?
So life not on planet Earth? Yes? And also, uh,
you know, bonus points to us as a species if
we find someone intelligent until they wipe us out. So
(01:32):
anyway we're talking about we're talking about this search for
life somewhere out there in the darkness of space. And
one thing that we have to do before we even
address the idea of looking for life is define it, right,
what what exactly is this whole life stick? Well? Life,
life is the it's the thing or the condition that
(01:55):
separates uh, you know, plants from inorganic material and animals
from inorganic material. So kind of like what you said, Ben,
the the ability to sense the outside world to take
in stimuli, so that it also includes the the ability
to grow, the capacity for growth and reproduction. You have
(02:16):
to be able to make copies of yourself. Um. You
have to have some kind of functional activity um, either
whether that's movement or I don't know, it's really slow
rate of growth. Okay. And there's also one other thing,
the continual change until death. Although that's not necessarily true
(02:39):
because we've seen some of the animals we've talked about
and some of the immortality stuff like Nutricula totopsis. The
isn't that the jellyfish that yes and then turns into
a channel essentially just going through entropy yeah, okay, I see.
I thought, I like the way you say that last
part better going through entropy. And we know they're different
(03:01):
types of life. Um, well, there are different types of
hypothetical life. So we are carbon based life forms. You
listening to this right now, The overwhelming probability that you
are also a carbon based life form and less extraterrestrials
or artificially intelligent programs have reached a level of which
(03:25):
we were unaware or unless we're all just holograms inside
some huge matrix, right yeah, and inside the dream of
some gigantic turtle and in that sense, the carbon and
it's just bits of data, yeah, just the firing synaps
uh synapse. Rather, so we know that there are theoretical
forms of biology that could exist, other life forms. It's
(03:49):
possible that carbon might not be the only creature in
the game. Silicon based life forms ammonia, methane, hydrogen, fluoride,
and and so on. Right, And this concept of noncarbon
life does a very important thing theoretically. It opens the door,
widens the spectrum for zeno biologists and sci fi fans
and so on to look at a wider range of
(04:13):
possible homes for alien life, right exactly. Um, so now
you can look at you can look at a planet
that isn't that There isn't a lot of water on
the planet, there isn't a lot of carbon. But there
might be a bunch of silica, a bunch of ammonia.
There you go, And there might be bad methane lake
smith methane pools all over the planet. Hey, let's go
(04:34):
check those out. Yeah, And I think that's I think
that's a fascinating thing. I want to go back to
types of life towards the end of this for something
that's complete speculation. But one thing that we learned our
continual search for extraterrestrial life is that we still have
a lot to learn about terrestrial life. There's still a
(04:55):
lot we don't know, Like, for instance, what is the
most common life form? Well, can I guess? Yeah, I
guess Yeah. I would guess some type of bacteria bacterium. Yeah,
I would have too. And uh, the it's it's interesting
because there's a great article I think it was in
(05:16):
Smithsonian that tells us that a Okay, here we go.
It's my first mispronunciation of the episode, uh plaga bactor ubiq,
which sounds sort of like some Eastern European shoe store. Um.
This single celled organism is usually cited as the most
(05:38):
common organism in the world. It's it's the Statistically, if
you were rolling the dice to become an organism, the
odds are that you would become this one. That's crazy
to think about. Yeah, but um, that might not be
the case, because it turns out there's something that eats
(05:59):
P unique okay, that is also widespread just all over
the place, numerous. It's a virus. Oh wow. Okay, So
here's the thing. This, this virus u P unique has
four different viruses that parasitize it or you know, prey
(06:20):
on it. And one of those, which has the incredibly
um unmemorable name of HTV c O one o p
is the most common of those viruses. And so if
we consider a virus to be a living thing, then
(06:41):
it turns out that our boy HTV is uh the
world's most common life form. But therein lies the debate, Right,
the virus alive? Is it? Well, it doesn't meet all
of the different criteria. Well, it definitely meets the reproduction sure, Um,
(07:03):
it has functional activity, I would I would argue, well,
I don't. I don't. Again, I don't know how that
is necessarily defined. But yeah, functional activities a little bit,
I don't know, a little a little bit softball, right.
What about capacity for growth? M hmmm, Well it can change,
it can because reproduction and growth, if we differentiate those,
(07:25):
we'll have to talk to someone ben well. Because the
thing is that a virus for people who don't think
of virus counts as life. A virus has to use
the metabolic process of its host in order to grow
and reproduce. There you Okay, so it's you know, a
virus is inherently a parasite. Um. So this means that
(07:50):
they they may not actually be life, or they're somewhere
between life, you know, um their third category. Right, Yeah,
and there's some weird maybe be there's some weird spectrum
of life to not life. Uh. But okay, so we
know that our world is teaming with life. Yes, it's everywhere.
(08:11):
I was going to just start naming off animals for it. Yeah,
but there's just a ton of it, a ton of
it everywhere, doing everywhere, yes, on planes. But we're doing
a great job of kind of getting rid of it,
finding the herd of life right, humans are right. Yeah,
we're we're getting rid of a lot of the eye
or order animals. For sure. There are more tigers in
(08:35):
captivity I think in Texas than there are on the
wild or in the United States. Um, which may be
a podcast for different day. But if if there are
so many different types of life that we know of
and the most common life is still debatably life on
(08:55):
our planet, then um, the question is why haven't we
found any thing else? Well, it's a very simple answer.
The universe is huge. Yeah, well it's true. Yeah, I mean,
come on, the universe is all. If we're going to
(09:16):
talk about definitions, the universe is every single uh, just
all of the matter, all of the energy, all of
it that exists. That is the universe. That stuff. And
you know, if you think about just the pale blue dot,
that image, or you know some of the things that
Carl Sagan talked about, just how insignificant our tiny little
(09:38):
planet is and even how small our sun is in
comparison to other stars. You just realize that we have
this massive amount of life just on this tiny little
speck of dust. You just know that there there has
to be something else out there, somewhere you know, I
think of it sometimes. Where have you ever seen an
(10:00):
animal in a weird place? Like you're in a grocery
store and you can see a bird and you think,
how that bird get here? I've seen a little blue
tailed lizard at a gym one time. I was just going,
what are you doing in here? Yeah? Just get to
work out or something. I'm trying to take them outside
or somewhere where they belong. I wonder they comparison. The
(10:22):
pale blue dot makes me think of that. But if
if we were to talk numbers about the size of
the known universe, it's so big that we do not
have the technology to figure out how big it is. Right,
So we can read it to a certain extent. But
that's just as far as our technology has gotten us yet. Right. Yeah,
we can see, um, the part that we can detect
(10:45):
extends in all directions for about ten billion light years.
Based on these observations, experts believe the universes between ten
and maybe twenty billion years old, and the Earth is
relatively relatively a rookie in the game, being only four
and a half billion years old. Yeah, and life didn't
originate on Earth for a long time after it was created, right, Yeah,
(11:08):
we're still figuring that part out too. Uh. So we've
got these people called cosmologists study cosmology the study of
just the whole universe, which sounds like a pretty ambitious degree, right.
And uh. According to some of these folks, uh, the
universe has no limits in space or time. Um. Galaxy
(11:33):
seemed to be traveling away from Earth and each other
at ever increasing speeds, providing the basis for the concept
that the entire universe, as well as a part we
know about, it's just expanding, just going bigger out yep. Uh.
And you know that's that's really cool. It's a little
bit of a lonely place to think about, right. But
(11:54):
by the way, if you want to know more about
this this kind of stuff, cosmology high we recommend you
check out Cosmos if you're not already watching it on
National Geographic and Fox. It's fantastic, you know what. I'm
glad you mentioned Cosmos. Neil deGrasse Tyson had another show
before that that was also good. Nova And you and
(12:15):
I are also pretty big fans of various science shows.
And these science shows, inevitably, if they touch on space,
they have to tackle some of the big questions, which
are first, there's, um, there's this huge paradox, right, life
on Earth is everywhere, some forms of life that maybe
(12:39):
don't even seem like good ideas are still around. And
then we have the universe, the biggest empty room in reality.
Now of course it's not empty, right, just mostly we
know there has to be something. So it appears that
the problem with finding alien life, which we've talked about
(12:59):
in this podcast before, is that the gap in space
isn't even as worrisome as the gap in time, right absolutely,
and as we know, they are interconnected. Uh so, so
people people have kind of pondered some of these things,
even before they really understood what the universe was, what
(13:21):
it was made of, what the galaxies were, you know,
even what rotated, what orbited around what people have been
looking up and thinking, oh, man, what the heck is
going on up there? And you know, we come up
with stories about the heavens and and beings that live
up in those stars. Um, and so so there's been
(13:44):
this constant search, at least internally for what the heck
is going on up there. And in nineteen fifty nine,
this thing called Ceti came around the which is the
search for extraterrestrial intelligence and H. And in that year
nine UH Cornell physicist Giuseppe uh Coconi, I don't think uh,
(14:09):
and UH Philip Morrison. They published this article in Nature,
which is isn't that a journal? And they pointed out
that that the potential for using microwave radio, UH, they
could use that to communicate or at least send signals
outward and then also possibly received signals that were coming
(14:29):
in towards Earth right. And this was a this was
a very interesting finding. Um, before we go a little
bit for the let me go ahead and establish some
of the other things here. There's the thing called the
Fermi paradox, when you know about if life exists, why
haven't we found it? Not? You and I talked about
that with the time and space. And then, um, there's
something else will explore called the Drake equation. And let's
(14:52):
introduce that guy. Now. Uh turns out in the sixties
he is a young radio astronomer, which was a thing
you and back then he had come to the same
idea about microwave radio, and he conducted the first microwave
radio search for signals from other solar systems in nine
(15:13):
in spring, I believe. So here's what he did. For
two months. He aimed a UH antenna and West Virginia
in the direction of two nearby stars that he thought
were kind of like our son. He tuned his receiver
to what he called the magic frequency, which we talked
about in our video series, right, Matt, uh So, what
(15:36):
what's the magic frequency? Well, it is the twenty one
centimeter line or the one thousand, four D and twenty
mega hurts. That's that's what you're that's the signal. Yeah,
that's the frequency of the signal. It's a neutral hydrogen.
And this turns out to be a spot on the
radio dial that cosny or Coconian. Morrison also e've had significance.
(16:02):
UM Drake's two months searching the skies for life UM
did garner a response and got some interest, but not
not from the intelligent life who's looking for instead of aliens?
It was terrestrial. It came from the Soviets, and then
in the nineteen sixties, uh, the Soviet Union pretty much
(16:25):
held sway over the SETI project, and UH it frequently
just it would adopt all these bold strategies and rather
than searching like nearby stars, the Soviets, they just basically
set up these almost omnidirectional antenna and they would observe
just these wide swaths of the sky, and they would
(16:46):
just kind of count on the existence of at least
a few advanced civilizations somewhere out there in this you know,
the scope that they're looking through, um, and they would
they just assumed that one or more of them would
be radiating some kind of transmission power from their planet
or from whatever it is that they inhabit. Yeah, and
and you know, probably be communists to write if we're
(17:10):
making assumptions. Uh yeah, they like, Yeah, it's sort of
like the the Soviet search for Shambalah when they when
they said, well clearly this mystery religion and city is real,
they're going to be communist. Uh. So, what I hope
is coming out here in in this part of the
show is that set itself. While there is a SETI Institute,
(17:34):
while there are SETI projects, there's UM it's much less
centralized than you might think. CT is just an acronymic pursuit, right,
that search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So, uh, different groups, some
of which may be familiar, some which may be unfamiliar,
have messed with it, and uh there's a wide swath
(17:58):
to use your word of opinions about this. So NASA
even got involved, right, So, kind of the beginning of
the nineteen seventies, Uh, the Aims Research Center that's in
Mountain View, California, by the way, they began to kind
of consider the technology required for a true search that
would be effective enough, you know, to to prove this stuff.
(18:21):
So a team of outside experts under the direction of
this guy, Bernard Oliver from Hewlett Packer, right, that's correct.
He he made this study for NASA which was known
as Project Cyclops. You've probably heard of that before if
you're a fan of this show. Um and the Cyclops
report it basically gave an analysis of SETI science and
(18:41):
kind of the tech issues that they were dealing with
at the time. It's really the foundation on which pretty
much all of the subsequent work from set is based upon. Yeah,
and it was some pretty good news too, because during
this time, more and more people began to believe, hey,
this we might have the its or something to it
to actually get cooking with gas here or excuse me,
(19:04):
microwave radio. And uh so the Aims Research Center had
some set programs. Uh, and so did JPL in Pasadena,
and they started working together to do targeted searches, which
is opposite of what the USSR was doing. Um. But
(19:24):
eventually Congress terminated the funding. And so we're wasted money.
We're throwing real dollars at imaginary beings. Essentially we can't
find them. So people began getting disappointed in STI but
st continues today and uh, we'll tell you how the
(19:46):
search for intelligent life is going, along with allegations of
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(22:38):
Just we go back in here to to set up
a quick laundry list. And I always thinking we could
each lead off some projects of set Oh great, there
are a ton of these. Okay, I'm gonna start with
project OZMA. Oh that's a very first one, right, yep.
It's the first SETI search. It was conducted by astronomer
Frank Drake that we talked about and that was an
(23:00):
teen sixty. Uh. Then there's the Ohio State Big Ear
SETI project launched in seventy three, and that is the
one that we mentioned in the video. That's where we
got the WOW signal, which which is either a natural
phenomenon that we have never heard of before or since
and still can't explain, or somehow is a signal from
(23:21):
intelligent life. Either way, it's fascinating. What happened to the
Big eyear. Oh it was shut down in for a
golf course. For a golf course of course. Okay, So
then you've got Project Serendip that you may have heard
of as well. That was launched by the University of
California at Berkeley, and that was in nineteen seventy nine. Yeah.
(23:44):
NASA also had the hr m S High Resolution Microwave
Survey in nineteen eighty two and discontinued in ninety three
when Congress cut the funding. Now you've got Project Meta.
This one's really cool. This was the MAGA Channel Extra
Terrestrial Array and it was launched at Harvard University in
nineteen eighty five and um it was meant to search
(24:07):
eight point four million point five HURTS channels and the
really low frequency. Yeah yeah. And then there's the Columbus
Optical SETI COSETTI. Uh, that's an earlier one. It's nineteen nineties,
and it is searching for laser signals. And then you
got Project Beta, another familiar one, possibly the Billion Channel
(24:29):
Extra Terrestrial Array Array that was also launched at Harvard
University in nineteen and again searching billions of channels. And
then there's Project Phoenix, which SETI Institute launched to continue
the work of NASA Project Argus, which launched in nineties six.
And this was CETI League's all sky survey projects. They're
(24:52):
looking everywhere. That's sort of like shaking the entire haystack
and hoping to prick yourself on a needle. Oh, maybe
that's unfair. Maybe. Then there's the Southern serendip And then
there's the one of the most exciting ones for anybody
who feels like personally lending a hand to the search
for intelligent life. Set at Home. Uh. Now this is
(25:15):
this is the It came out in nineteen I think
I think that's around the time that I signed up
for it UM. And it was essentially literally a a
program that ran kind of behind the scenes on your
computer and it just crunched data. Basically, it was analyzing data.
Did you ever do that? Yeah? I did it for
(25:36):
a short time. I even did it here at how
stuff works on my computer. When I would go home,
I remember that overnight it would be running steady at home.
So maybe this could be your way or our way
to pitch in and find intelligent life. But now, Noel, please,
could I get some conspiracy music? Perfect? Thank you. The
(26:00):
reason we're asking for this music, of course, is because
now it's time to talk about whether there could be
a cover up. Because Matt, you're memorily did our video.
A lot of guys were commenting on YouTube about how
set has a secrecy clause. It does publicly disclose things, right,
(26:21):
Can you tell me a little bit about that, man? So, yeah,
you gotta think about let's just think about the pursuit
of science. Science. When you're conducting a study, um, you know,
and then you have some findings that you really want
someone to know about, or you want the world to
know about, for you know, fame, fortune, and the advancement
of science. You you generally make your your work known,
(26:47):
You release it, you get it, you send it to journals,
to get it pure reviewed and um. But and that's
that's on a general wide level, but at the at
the localized level in the study that's occurring, the one
study that a group of scientists is doing somewhere, that's
usually kept pretty private, okay, because you don't want other
(27:08):
scientists to know exactly what it is that you're looking at,
because again you're searching for I use the phrase fame
and fortune, but I don't want to get scooped exactly.
So that's just between scientists, right, trying to keep things secretive.
But there's another group that's even more tenuous, has a
more tenuous relationship with us, with the individual scientists. I think,
(27:31):
I know you're talking about, well, yeah, the journalist, right,
the media. Yeah, that that does make sense because if
you read news, whether on the Internet, whether through a newspaper,
or you know, on your local television, you realize over
time that the media and journalists have a a tendency
(27:53):
to grab something, sensationalize it, and run with it. So
if some buddy publishes a study that says, we found
a certain type of amino acid when combined in this
certain situation, will do you know action X? Then people
(28:14):
come out. People may welcome out with amino acid has
intelligence solving puzzles well. And that's why the the press
releases are so important for the places like NASA, CDC,
things like that, or if you actually have a you know,
every once in a while you'll hear that NASA is
gonna make an announcement or the CDC will make an
(28:35):
announcement and they have a very public hey, and there's
usually a PR person there trying to give out the message.
Now that works both ways in my mind. Ben. So
it's not only is it trying to make clear what
the information is, but it's also trying to manage it.
It's managing it exactly. It's spinning it. Yeah, I I
see that's the thing, because you and I talked about
(28:56):
this too, like we know that you know, this guy
wrote a book called The Eerie Silence? Are We Alone
in the Universe? Professor Paul Davies he was the chair
of the SETI Post Detection Science and Technology Task Group
for a while, and he said that the group themselves
grappled with the need for public disclosure, but they ultimately
(29:18):
decided to keep the to keep it behind closed. The
worst kind of decisions because They were worried that if
information leaked out prematurely, they might be, in lack of
a better phrase, a boy who cried wolf situation. Um. Well,
you know when the Wild Signal came out, there was
a huge media just outpouring of whoa inspect like speculation,
(29:40):
just saying what the heck was this thing? Is it aliens?
Oh my god? We know now we now know that
we're not alone in the universe because of the Wild Signal,
right yeah, and uh, which may be true, but it's
not but it but you know it's not a proven thing,
right right? Yeah? We um. We look at that a
little bit in our video series. Again, if you haven't
(30:00):
checked it out, do check it out, because we learned
some really cool stuff in there. Especially there's that one
quote that Jerry Emmons says where the video. Yeah yeah, um,
I don't want to ruin it for you, but check
it out, check it out. Uh. So we also, I
figured it was best for us to go straight to
the source when we're talking about some of the conspiratorial stuff,
(30:24):
whether there has been evidence that has been suppressed so
from CTS, UH frequently asked questions. They tackle a lot
of this stuff. One question is, has set Uh found
life or evidence of life on other planets. The answer
is no, Scientists that found no clear indications of life
(30:45):
past or present beyond the Earth. There have been tantalizing
suggestions that the Viking mission might have detected evidence of
microbile microbial life on Mars, that there are falsil fossil
microbes and some Mars rocks, but they haven't been fair
verified yet. Now, if you believe that there is an
extraterrestrial contact with Earth already, then of course it's it's
(31:10):
easy to see how set He could seem like smoke
and mirrors, you know what I mean. But I I
have to say it's it's kind of difficult to believe
that if there were extraterrestrials on the planet's it's difficult
to believe how that could remain a secret. Um agreed.
Unless now we're one of my favorite parts of the
(31:32):
episode to Matt, which is where I kind of I
ask you you asked me about this sort of stuff.
I want to go ahead and jump into this right away.
We talked earlier about the origin of life on Earth.
Right still kind of wishy washy. We're still not sure
exactly how it happened. But there's that great theory with
(31:52):
that horrible name, which you've already mentioned on our podcast, Yeah,
which would mean that if if it were true, it
would mean that we were the alien life form, right
that life, Yeah, life was the alien life form. That
to go with our virus analogy that if you picture
Earth as just a single selled organism, right with everything
(32:16):
that a virus needs to survive, then somehow on a meteor, uh,
we washed out into Earth and then just started replicating
and now we're we're teeming over you know, infesting the
host organics. That's intense man. For me, that's a that's
(32:38):
a hugely compelling argument for how life came about. I know,
it's it's a little tough because you have to assume
that life existed somewhere else in order for it to
get here. It's kind of kicking the can down the road,
isn't it. Yeah? Exactly, just exactly so it's not it's
not exactly answering our our stuff. But um, it all
(33:01):
goes back to the idea of life as we know it,
based on DNA, based on r n A. Um, what
else could be out there? Could there be some other
thing that doesn't use any of that, you know. Um, well,
it's it's a possibility. And that's the great thing about study.
We've we've allowed ourselves to think differently through this search.
(33:23):
And I think, man, Ben, I gotta tell you, I
think we're gonna find some really soon with with the
new telescopes. Who with, I think we're gonna at least
find the trace of life. It's gonna be microbial, It's
gonna be tiny, uh, microorganisms, but it's gonna be there.
There's another fascinating idea that I heard, the conspiratorial idea,
(33:48):
which was that uh, for ideological or religious reasons, people
in government and in the executive levels of different scientific
institutes were cooperating to destroy evidence of alien life, you know,
microbial stuff, so that it wouldn't shake the foundations of
(34:11):
world religions. You know. I heard it sometimes for Christianity, Um,
primarily for Christianity. Was very interesting theory. I didn't find
too much to back it up. One thing that I
read specifically was citing the the methodology of testing soil
(34:33):
for life, or testing dirt on Mars or the moon. Um,
there's a there's a method that the rovers used to
heat up the We talked about this, right, I think yeah.
They they heat up the sample and incinerate it essentially,
and then analyze the gases. So if there was something
(34:56):
in there, they would it would show up in the
different it was carbon based, But what if it's not
carbon based and there are a couple of there a
couple of different different ideas with that. That was an
interesting theory to me, and I would I would love
to learn if there were you know, is is it
possible that's some sort of alien craft or alien culture
(35:22):
interacted with Earth at some point in history. It's possible.
It's difficult to see how it could be plausible given
the time and distance involved, without going into some sort
of um extra dimensional idea. Right. Um, I want to
believe that stuff. You know that. Yeah, everybody listening knows.
(35:44):
I want to believe absolutely. Fox Molder over here, I
hope you do too. That's the I think that's important.
It's the it's the inspiration and the imagination that us
going absolutely. First off, if we didn't want to figure
out what's going on, if we didn't want to believe things,
and uh, there would have been no progress as a species.
(36:08):
Why would you even look into it, and also clearly
the the most implausible thing at all in this entire conversation,
The most unreasonable impossible thing is that there would not
be other intelligent life somewhere in the universe, given that
there is an infinite size. That's the most ridiculous thing.
(36:30):
That is literally the most ridiculous thing to think. Thank you,
Dr Drake. Yeah, yeah, thank you for the Drake equation. God,
it's time for us to go, and we didn't even
get to the shadow biosphere, which I think we should
talk about in the future. We have to. But before
we get out of here really quickly, I just want
to read this piece of listener mail. This comes from
(36:56):
Charles B. He says, Hello, I saw the video about
aliens in dulcea New Mexico. Sorry about that. My fault, guys,
blame it on me. It was my fault. He says.
I'm from New Mexico and I'm a lifelong resident. Ever
since I was in grade school, Dulce has always been
associated with aliens. Like Roswell, New Mexico is and he says,
(37:19):
growing up and now in adulthood, the people in New
Mexico they have an inside joke for Dulce, and that
is Dulce is where the government kept all their aliens.
All towns in northern New Mexico, even Dulce, are are
very rural and the mass majority of these towns have
only one high school. That kind of gives you an
idea of how small they might be. He also says
(37:41):
that many people in northern in the northern part of
New Mexico is still speaks Spanish and are very close
to one another. People and their families don't stay very
far away from their homes and communities in northern New Mexico.
Um in a town like Dulce, it's very common to
find two or three generations of intermediate and extended families
living together and in small communities. So odds are finding
(38:01):
people that may have personal insight on this alien matter
might not be too difficult. In the video, you spoke
about the alleged security guard Thomas Costello and how there
might be confusion about the spelling of his name, either
c O S or c A S. And what Charles
here suggests is that it may actually be Castillo I
(38:25):
guess Spanish version of it, and he also says later
on that it might not be Thomas. It might be Thomas. However,
I kind of looked into it and found out that
it is actually the alleged person is Thomas Edwin cost Costello. Um.
(38:46):
So I just wanted to let you know, by the way,
thank you Charles for writing again let us know that's
that's interesting insight. Um. But we did a little more
digging and we found out that it is Thomas Edwin Costello,
and we are going to keep digging. We hope that
you enjoyed this episode and we'd like to hear what
(39:06):
we should cover in upcoming episodes. There are a couple
of ways to find us. We're all over the internet. Uh,
check out Matt and I on Twitter. See us on
Facebook where we post a lot of stuff that we
never get to do shows on right. I was really
excited about that blood thing. I don't know, UM, and
follow our website stuff they don't want you to know
dot com. If you want to get past the social
(39:29):
media rigor morole and write to us, then we love
hearing your stories. We are going to do an episode
with that ghost story you you persuaded us. We had
so many people right in and say, don't tell us
it's an amazing story and then not cover it. So
that is on the way we promise UM. In the meantime,
let us know your stories. All of our best ideas
(39:50):
and all of our best stories come from our listeners,
so we want to hear from you. Our email address
is conspiracy at Discovery dot com. For more on this
topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube dot com slash
conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch on Twitter
(40:11):
at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, everyone,
Welcome back to the show, The Big Show. My name
is Matt and I'm Ben, and that's our super producer
(00:23):
Noel behind the behind the boards are the keys. Yeah,
we're just gonna point to him. He's right over there.
So if you have a very specific form of probably
non existence synesthesia, you can feel our fingers moving and
it probably you know, feels the way lavender smells or something.
I don't know. Yeah, it feels feels very very nice,
I'm assuming. So it's interesting that our segue or our
(00:46):
banter at the top of this episode concerns sensation, right,
because that is one of the abiding universal characteristics of life.
It's the ability to sense something right from your outside
environment and then in some way to respond to it.
(01:08):
But when we when we think about what life actually is.
Oh and spoiler alert, I've forgotten, Matt, what's name of
this this episode of this search for extra terrestrial life?
So life not on planet Earth? Yes? And also, uh,
you know, bonus points to us as a species if
we find someone intelligent until they wipe us out. So
(01:32):
anyway we're talking about we're talking about this search for
life somewhere out there in the darkness of space. And
one thing that we have to do before we even
address the idea of looking for life is define it, right,
what what exactly is this whole life stick? Well? Life,
life is the it's the thing or the condition that
(01:55):
separates uh, you know, plants from inorganic material and animals
from inorganic material. So kind of like what you said, Ben,
the the ability to sense the outside world to take
in stimuli, so that it also includes the the ability
to grow, the capacity for growth and reproduction. You have
(02:16):
to be able to make copies of yourself. Um. You
have to have some kind of functional activity um, either
whether that's movement or I don't know, it's really slow
rate of growth. Okay. And there's also one other thing,
the continual change until death. Although that's not necessarily true
(02:39):
because we've seen some of the animals we've talked about
and some of the immortality stuff like Nutricula totopsis. The
isn't that the jellyfish that yes and then turns into
a channel essentially just going through entropy yeah, okay, I see.
I thought, I like the way you say that last
part better going through entropy. And we know they're different
(03:01):
types of life. Um, well, there are different types of
hypothetical life. So we are carbon based life forms. You
listening to this right now, The overwhelming probability that you
are also a carbon based life form and less extraterrestrials
or artificially intelligent programs have reached a level of which
(03:25):
we were unaware or unless we're all just holograms inside
some huge matrix, right yeah, and inside the dream of
some gigantic turtle and in that sense, the carbon and
it's just bits of data, yeah, just the firing synaps
uh synapse. Rather, so we know that there are theoretical
forms of biology that could exist, other life forms. It's
(03:49):
possible that carbon might not be the only creature in
the game. Silicon based life forms ammonia, methane, hydrogen, fluoride,
and and so on. Right, And this concept of noncarbon
life does a very important thing theoretically. It opens the door,
widens the spectrum for zeno biologists and sci fi fans
and so on to look at a wider range of
(04:13):
possible homes for alien life, right exactly. Um, so now
you can look at you can look at a planet
that isn't that There isn't a lot of water on
the planet, there isn't a lot of carbon. But there
might be a bunch of silica, a bunch of ammonia.
There you go, And there might be bad methane lake
smith methane pools all over the planet. Hey, let's go
(04:34):
check those out. Yeah, And I think that's I think
that's a fascinating thing. I want to go back to
types of life towards the end of this for something
that's complete speculation. But one thing that we learned our
continual search for extraterrestrial life is that we still have
a lot to learn about terrestrial life. There's still a
(04:55):
lot we don't know, Like, for instance, what is the
most common life form? Well, can I guess? Yeah, I
guess Yeah. I would guess some type of bacteria bacterium. Yeah,
I would have too. And uh, the it's it's interesting
because there's a great article I think it was in
(05:16):
Smithsonian that tells us that a Okay, here we go.
It's my first mispronunciation of the episode, uh plaga bactor ubiq,
which sounds sort of like some Eastern European shoe store. Um.
This single celled organism is usually cited as the most
(05:38):
common organism in the world. It's it's the Statistically, if
you were rolling the dice to become an organism, the
odds are that you would become this one. That's crazy
to think about. Yeah, but um, that might not be
the case, because it turns out there's something that eats
(05:59):
P unique okay, that is also widespread just all over
the place, numerous. It's a virus. Oh wow. Okay, So
here's the thing. This, this virus u P unique has
four different viruses that parasitize it or you know, prey
(06:20):
on it. And one of those, which has the incredibly
um unmemorable name of HTV c O one o p
is the most common of those viruses. And so if
we consider a virus to be a living thing, then
(06:41):
it turns out that our boy HTV is uh the
world's most common life form. But therein lies the debate, Right,
the virus alive? Is it? Well, it doesn't meet all
of the different criteria. Well, it definitely meets the reproduction sure, Um,
(07:03):
it has functional activity, I would I would argue, well,
I don't. I don't. Again, I don't know how that
is necessarily defined. But yeah, functional activities a little bit,
I don't know, a little a little bit softball, right.
What about capacity for growth? M hmmm, Well it can change,
it can because reproduction and growth, if we differentiate those,
(07:25):
we'll have to talk to someone ben well. Because the
thing is that a virus for people who don't think
of virus counts as life. A virus has to use
the metabolic process of its host in order to grow
and reproduce. There you Okay, so it's you know, a
virus is inherently a parasite. Um. So this means that
(07:50):
they they may not actually be life, or they're somewhere
between life, you know, um their third category. Right, Yeah,
and there's some weird maybe be there's some weird spectrum
of life to not life. Uh. But okay, so we
know that our world is teaming with life. Yes, it's everywhere.
(08:11):
I was going to just start naming off animals for it. Yeah,
but there's just a ton of it, a ton of
it everywhere, doing everywhere, yes, on planes. But we're doing
a great job of kind of getting rid of it,
finding the herd of life right, humans are right. Yeah,
we're we're getting rid of a lot of the eye
or order animals. For sure. There are more tigers in
(08:35):
captivity I think in Texas than there are on the
wild or in the United States. Um, which may be
a podcast for different day. But if if there are
so many different types of life that we know of
and the most common life is still debatably life on
(08:55):
our planet, then um, the question is why haven't we
found any thing else? Well, it's a very simple answer.
The universe is huge. Yeah, well it's true. Yeah, I mean,
come on, the universe is all. If we're going to
(09:16):
talk about definitions, the universe is every single uh, just
all of the matter, all of the energy, all of
it that exists. That is the universe. That stuff. And
you know, if you think about just the pale blue dot,
that image, or you know some of the things that
Carl Sagan talked about, just how insignificant our tiny little
(09:38):
planet is and even how small our sun is in
comparison to other stars. You just realize that we have
this massive amount of life just on this tiny little
speck of dust. You just know that there there has
to be something else out there, somewhere you know, I
think of it sometimes. Where have you ever seen an
(10:00):
animal in a weird place? Like you're in a grocery
store and you can see a bird and you think,
how that bird get here? I've seen a little blue
tailed lizard at a gym one time. I was just going,
what are you doing in here? Yeah? Just get to
work out or something. I'm trying to take them outside
or somewhere where they belong. I wonder they comparison. The
(10:22):
pale blue dot makes me think of that. But if
if we were to talk numbers about the size of
the known universe, it's so big that we do not
have the technology to figure out how big it is. Right,
So we can read it to a certain extent. But
that's just as far as our technology has gotten us yet. Right. Yeah,
we can see, um, the part that we can detect
(10:45):
extends in all directions for about ten billion light years.
Based on these observations, experts believe the universes between ten
and maybe twenty billion years old, and the Earth is
relatively relatively a rookie in the game, being only four
and a half billion years old. Yeah, and life didn't
originate on Earth for a long time after it was created, right, Yeah,
(11:08):
we're still figuring that part out too. Uh. So we've
got these people called cosmologists study cosmology the study of
just the whole universe, which sounds like a pretty ambitious degree, right.
And uh. According to some of these folks, uh, the
universe has no limits in space or time. Um. Galaxy
(11:33):
seemed to be traveling away from Earth and each other
at ever increasing speeds, providing the basis for the concept
that the entire universe, as well as a part we
know about, it's just expanding, just going bigger out yep. Uh.
And you know that's that's really cool. It's a little
bit of a lonely place to think about, right. But
(11:54):
by the way, if you want to know more about
this this kind of stuff, cosmology high we recommend you
check out Cosmos if you're not already watching it on
National Geographic and Fox. It's fantastic, you know what. I'm
glad you mentioned Cosmos. Neil deGrasse Tyson had another show
before that that was also good. Nova And you and
(12:15):
I are also pretty big fans of various science shows.
And these science shows, inevitably, if they touch on space,
they have to tackle some of the big questions, which
are first, there's, um, there's this huge paradox, right, life
on Earth is everywhere, some forms of life that maybe
(12:39):
don't even seem like good ideas are still around. And
then we have the universe, the biggest empty room in reality.
Now of course it's not empty, right, just mostly we
know there has to be something. So it appears that
the problem with finding alien life, which we've talked about
(12:59):
in this podcast before, is that the gap in space
isn't even as worrisome as the gap in time, right absolutely,
and as we know, they are interconnected. Uh so, so
people people have kind of pondered some of these things,
even before they really understood what the universe was, what
(13:21):
it was made of, what the galaxies were, you know,
even what rotated, what orbited around what people have been
looking up and thinking, oh, man, what the heck is
going on up there? And you know, we come up
with stories about the heavens and and beings that live
up in those stars. Um, and so so there's been
(13:44):
this constant search, at least internally for what the heck
is going on up there. And in nineteen fifty nine,
this thing called Ceti came around the which is the
search for extraterrestrial intelligence and H. And in that year
nine UH Cornell physicist Giuseppe uh Coconi, I don't think uh,
(14:09):
and UH Philip Morrison. They published this article in Nature,
which is isn't that a journal? And they pointed out
that that the potential for using microwave radio, UH, they
could use that to communicate or at least send signals
outward and then also possibly received signals that were coming
(14:29):
in towards Earth right. And this was a this was
a very interesting finding. Um, before we go a little
bit for the let me go ahead and establish some
of the other things here. There's the thing called the
Fermi paradox, when you know about if life exists, why
haven't we found it? Not? You and I talked about
that with the time and space. And then, um, there's
something else will explore called the Drake equation. And let's
(14:52):
introduce that guy. Now. Uh turns out in the sixties
he is a young radio astronomer, which was a thing
you and back then he had come to the same
idea about microwave radio, and he conducted the first microwave
radio search for signals from other solar systems in nine
(15:13):
in spring, I believe. So here's what he did. For
two months. He aimed a UH antenna and West Virginia
in the direction of two nearby stars that he thought
were kind of like our son. He tuned his receiver
to what he called the magic frequency, which we talked
about in our video series, right, Matt, uh So, what
(15:36):
what's the magic frequency? Well, it is the twenty one
centimeter line or the one thousand, four D and twenty
mega hurts. That's that's what you're that's the signal. Yeah,
that's the frequency of the signal. It's a neutral hydrogen.
And this turns out to be a spot on the
radio dial that cosny or Coconian. Morrison also e've had significance.
(16:02):
UM Drake's two months searching the skies for life UM
did garner a response and got some interest, but not
not from the intelligent life who's looking for instead of aliens?
It was terrestrial. It came from the Soviets, and then
in the nineteen sixties, uh, the Soviet Union pretty much
(16:25):
held sway over the SETI project, and UH it frequently
just it would adopt all these bold strategies and rather
than searching like nearby stars, the Soviets, they just basically
set up these almost omnidirectional antenna and they would observe
just these wide swaths of the sky, and they would
(16:46):
just kind of count on the existence of at least
a few advanced civilizations somewhere out there in this you know,
the scope that they're looking through, um, and they would
they just assumed that one or more of them would
be radiating some kind of transmission power from their planet
or from whatever it is that they inhabit. Yeah, and
and you know, probably be communists to write if we're
(17:10):
making assumptions. Uh yeah, they like, Yeah, it's sort of
like the the Soviet search for Shambalah when they when
they said, well clearly this mystery religion and city is real,
they're going to be communist. Uh. So, what I hope
is coming out here in in this part of the
show is that set itself. While there is a SETI Institute,
(17:34):
while there are SETI projects, there's UM it's much less
centralized than you might think. CT is just an acronymic pursuit, right,
that search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So, uh, different groups, some
of which may be familiar, some which may be unfamiliar,
have messed with it, and uh there's a wide swath
(17:58):
to use your word of opinions about this. So NASA
even got involved, right, So, kind of the beginning of
the nineteen seventies, Uh, the Aims Research Center that's in
Mountain View, California, by the way, they began to kind
of consider the technology required for a true search that
would be effective enough, you know, to to prove this stuff.
(18:21):
So a team of outside experts under the direction of
this guy, Bernard Oliver from Hewlett Packer, right, that's correct.
He he made this study for NASA which was known
as Project Cyclops. You've probably heard of that before if
you're a fan of this show. Um and the Cyclops
report it basically gave an analysis of SETI science and
(18:41):
kind of the tech issues that they were dealing with
at the time. It's really the foundation on which pretty
much all of the subsequent work from set is based upon. Yeah,
and it was some pretty good news too, because during
this time, more and more people began to believe, hey,
this we might have the its or something to it
to actually get cooking with gas here or excuse me,
(19:04):
microwave radio. And uh so the Aims Research Center had
some set programs. Uh, and so did JPL in Pasadena,
and they started working together to do targeted searches, which
is opposite of what the USSR was doing. Um. But
(19:24):
eventually Congress terminated the funding. And so we're wasted money.
We're throwing real dollars at imaginary beings. Essentially we can't
find them. So people began getting disappointed in STI but
st continues today and uh, we'll tell you how the
(19:46):
search for intelligent life is going, along with allegations of
cover ups. After a word from our sponsor. Hello, friends,
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(22:38):
Just we go back in here to to set up
a quick laundry list. And I always thinking we could
each lead off some projects of set Oh great, there
are a ton of these. Okay, I'm gonna start with
project OZMA. Oh that's a very first one, right, yep.
It's the first SETI search. It was conducted by astronomer
Frank Drake that we talked about and that was an
(23:00):
teen sixty. Uh. Then there's the Ohio State Big Ear
SETI project launched in seventy three, and that is the
one that we mentioned in the video. That's where we
got the WOW signal, which which is either a natural
phenomenon that we have never heard of before or since
and still can't explain, or somehow is a signal from
(23:21):
intelligent life. Either way, it's fascinating. What happened to the
Big eyear. Oh it was shut down in for a
golf course. For a golf course of course. Okay, So
then you've got Project Serendip that you may have heard
of as well. That was launched by the University of
California at Berkeley, and that was in nineteen seventy nine. Yeah.
(23:44):
NASA also had the hr m S High Resolution Microwave
Survey in nineteen eighty two and discontinued in ninety three
when Congress cut the funding. Now you've got Project Meta.
This one's really cool. This was the MAGA Channel Extra
Terrestrial Array and it was launched at Harvard University in
nineteen eighty five and um it was meant to search
(24:07):
eight point four million point five HURTS channels and the
really low frequency. Yeah yeah. And then there's the Columbus
Optical SETI COSETTI. Uh, that's an earlier one. It's nineteen nineties,
and it is searching for laser signals. And then you
got Project Beta, another familiar one, possibly the Billion Channel
(24:29):
Extra Terrestrial Array Array that was also launched at Harvard
University in nineteen and again searching billions of channels. And
then there's Project Phoenix, which SETI Institute launched to continue
the work of NASA Project Argus, which launched in nineties six.
And this was CETI League's all sky survey projects. They're
(24:52):
looking everywhere. That's sort of like shaking the entire haystack
and hoping to prick yourself on a needle. Oh, maybe
that's unfair. Maybe. Then there's the Southern serendip And then
there's the one of the most exciting ones for anybody
who feels like personally lending a hand to the search
for intelligent life. Set at Home. Uh. Now this is
(25:15):
this is the It came out in nineteen I think
I think that's around the time that I signed up
for it UM. And it was essentially literally a a
program that ran kind of behind the scenes on your
computer and it just crunched data. Basically, it was analyzing data.
Did you ever do that? Yeah? I did it for
(25:36):
a short time. I even did it here at how
stuff works on my computer. When I would go home,
I remember that overnight it would be running steady at home.
So maybe this could be your way or our way
to pitch in and find intelligent life. But now, Noel, please,
could I get some conspiracy music? Perfect? Thank you. The
(26:00):
reason we're asking for this music, of course, is because
now it's time to talk about whether there could be
a cover up. Because Matt, you're memorily did our video.
A lot of guys were commenting on YouTube about how
set has a secrecy clause. It does publicly disclose things, right,
(26:21):
Can you tell me a little bit about that, man? So, yeah,
you gotta think about let's just think about the pursuit
of science. Science. When you're conducting a study, um, you know,
and then you have some findings that you really want
someone to know about, or you want the world to
know about, for you know, fame, fortune, and the advancement
of science. You you generally make your your work known,
(26:47):
You release it, you get it, you send it to journals,
to get it pure reviewed and um. But and that's
that's on a general wide level, but at the at
the localized level in the study that's occurring, the one
study that a group of scientists is doing somewhere, that's
usually kept pretty private, okay, because you don't want other
(27:08):
scientists to know exactly what it is that you're looking at,
because again you're searching for I use the phrase fame
and fortune, but I don't want to get scooped exactly.
So that's just between scientists, right, trying to keep things secretive.
But there's another group that's even more tenuous, has a
more tenuous relationship with us, with the individual scientists. I think,
(27:31):
I know you're talking about, well, yeah, the journalist, right,
the media. Yeah, that that does make sense because if
you read news, whether on the Internet, whether through a newspaper,
or you know, on your local television, you realize over
time that the media and journalists have a a tendency
(27:53):
to grab something, sensationalize it, and run with it. So
if some buddy publishes a study that says, we found
a certain type of amino acid when combined in this
certain situation, will do you know action X? Then people
(28:14):
come out. People may welcome out with amino acid has
intelligence solving puzzles well. And that's why the the press
releases are so important for the places like NASA, CDC,
things like that, or if you actually have a you know,
every once in a while you'll hear that NASA is
gonna make an announcement or the CDC will make an
(28:35):
announcement and they have a very public hey, and there's
usually a PR person there trying to give out the message.
Now that works both ways in my mind. Ben. So
it's not only is it trying to make clear what
the information is, but it's also trying to manage it.
It's managing it exactly. It's spinning it. Yeah, I I
see that's the thing, because you and I talked about
(28:56):
this too, like we know that you know, this guy
wrote a book called The Eerie Silence? Are We Alone
in the Universe? Professor Paul Davies he was the chair
of the SETI Post Detection Science and Technology Task Group
for a while, and he said that the group themselves
grappled with the need for public disclosure, but they ultimately
(29:18):
decided to keep the to keep it behind closed. The
worst kind of decisions because They were worried that if
information leaked out prematurely, they might be, in lack of
a better phrase, a boy who cried wolf situation. Um. Well,
you know when the Wild Signal came out, there was
a huge media just outpouring of whoa inspect like speculation,
(29:40):
just saying what the heck was this thing? Is it aliens?
Oh my god? We know now we now know that
we're not alone in the universe because of the Wild Signal,
right yeah, and uh, which may be true, but it's
not but it but you know it's not a proven thing,
right right? Yeah? We um. We look at that a
little bit in our video series. Again, if you haven't
(30:00):
checked it out, do check it out, because we learned
some really cool stuff in there. Especially there's that one
quote that Jerry Emmons says where the video. Yeah yeah, um,
I don't want to ruin it for you, but check
it out, check it out. Uh. So we also, I
figured it was best for us to go straight to
the source when we're talking about some of the conspiratorial stuff,
(30:24):
whether there has been evidence that has been suppressed so
from CTS, UH frequently asked questions. They tackle a lot
of this stuff. One question is, has set Uh found
life or evidence of life on other planets. The answer
is no, Scientists that found no clear indications of life
(30:45):
past or present beyond the Earth. There have been tantalizing
suggestions that the Viking mission might have detected evidence of
microbile microbial life on Mars, that there are falsil fossil
microbes and some Mars rocks, but they haven't been fair
verified yet. Now, if you believe that there is an
extraterrestrial contact with Earth already, then of course it's it's
(31:10):
easy to see how set He could seem like smoke
and mirrors, you know what I mean. But I I
have to say it's it's kind of difficult to believe
that if there were extraterrestrials on the planet's it's difficult
to believe how that could remain a secret. Um agreed.
Unless now we're one of my favorite parts of the
(31:32):
episode to Matt, which is where I kind of I
ask you you asked me about this sort of stuff.
I want to go ahead and jump into this right away.
We talked earlier about the origin of life on Earth.
Right still kind of wishy washy. We're still not sure
exactly how it happened. But there's that great theory with
(31:52):
that horrible name, which you've already mentioned on our podcast, Yeah,
which would mean that if if it were true, it
would mean that we were the alien life form, right
that life, Yeah, life was the alien life form. That
to go with our virus analogy that if you picture
Earth as just a single selled organism, right with everything
(32:16):
that a virus needs to survive, then somehow on a meteor, uh,
we washed out into Earth and then just started replicating
and now we're we're teeming over you know, infesting the
host organics. That's intense man. For me, that's a that's
(32:38):
a hugely compelling argument for how life came about. I know,
it's it's a little tough because you have to assume
that life existed somewhere else in order for it to
get here. It's kind of kicking the can down the road,
isn't it. Yeah? Exactly, just exactly so it's not it's
not exactly answering our our stuff. But um, it all
(33:01):
goes back to the idea of life as we know it,
based on DNA, based on r n A. Um, what
else could be out there? Could there be some other
thing that doesn't use any of that, you know. Um, well,
it's it's a possibility. And that's the great thing about study.
We've we've allowed ourselves to think differently through this search.
(33:23):
And I think, man, Ben, I gotta tell you, I
think we're gonna find some really soon with with the
new telescopes. Who with, I think we're gonna at least
find the trace of life. It's gonna be microbial, It's
gonna be tiny, uh, microorganisms, but it's gonna be there.
There's another fascinating idea that I heard, the conspiratorial idea,
(33:48):
which was that uh, for ideological or religious reasons, people
in government and in the executive levels of different scientific
institutes were cooperating to destroy evidence of alien life, you know,
microbial stuff, so that it wouldn't shake the foundations of
(34:11):
world religions. You know. I heard it sometimes for Christianity, Um,
primarily for Christianity. Was very interesting theory. I didn't find
too much to back it up. One thing that I
read specifically was citing the the methodology of testing soil
(34:33):
for life, or testing dirt on Mars or the moon. Um,
there's a there's a method that the rovers used to
heat up the We talked about this, right, I think yeah.
They they heat up the sample and incinerate it essentially,
and then analyze the gases. So if there was something
(34:56):
in there, they would it would show up in the
different it was carbon based, But what if it's not
carbon based and there are a couple of there a
couple of different different ideas with that. That was an
interesting theory to me, and I would I would love
to learn if there were you know, is is it
possible that's some sort of alien craft or alien culture
(35:22):
interacted with Earth at some point in history. It's possible.
It's difficult to see how it could be plausible given
the time and distance involved, without going into some sort
of um extra dimensional idea. Right. Um, I want to
believe that stuff. You know that. Yeah, everybody listening knows.
(35:44):
I want to believe absolutely. Fox Molder over here, I
hope you do too. That's the I think that's important.
It's the it's the inspiration and the imagination that us
going absolutely. First off, if we didn't want to figure
out what's going on, if we didn't want to believe things,
and uh, there would have been no progress as a species.
(36:08):
Why would you even look into it, and also clearly
the the most implausible thing at all in this entire conversation,
The most unreasonable impossible thing is that there would not
be other intelligent life somewhere in the universe, given that
there is an infinite size. That's the most ridiculous thing.
(36:30):
That is literally the most ridiculous thing to think. Thank you,
Dr Drake. Yeah, yeah, thank you for the Drake equation. God,
it's time for us to go, and we didn't even
get to the shadow biosphere, which I think we should
talk about in the future. We have to. But before
we get out of here really quickly, I just want
to read this piece of listener mail. This comes from
(36:56):
Charles B. He says, Hello, I saw the video about
aliens in dulcea New Mexico. Sorry about that. My fault, guys,
blame it on me. It was my fault. He says.
I'm from New Mexico and I'm a lifelong resident. Ever
since I was in grade school, Dulce has always been
associated with aliens. Like Roswell, New Mexico is and he says,
(37:19):
growing up and now in adulthood, the people in New
Mexico they have an inside joke for Dulce, and that
is Dulce is where the government kept all their aliens.
All towns in northern New Mexico, even Dulce, are are
very rural and the mass majority of these towns have
only one high school. That kind of gives you an
idea of how small they might be. He also says
(37:41):
that many people in northern in the northern part of
New Mexico is still speaks Spanish and are very close
to one another. People and their families don't stay very
far away from their homes and communities in northern New Mexico.
Um in a town like Dulce, it's very common to
find two or three generations of intermediate and extended families
living together and in small communities. So odds are finding
(38:01):
people that may have personal insight on this alien matter
might not be too difficult. In the video, you spoke
about the alleged security guard Thomas Costello and how there
might be confusion about the spelling of his name, either
c O S or c A S. And what Charles
here suggests is that it may actually be Castillo I
(38:25):
guess Spanish version of it, and he also says later
on that it might not be Thomas. It might be Thomas. However,
I kind of looked into it and found out that
it is actually the alleged person is Thomas Edwin cost Costello. Um.
(38:46):
So I just wanted to let you know, by the way,
thank you Charles for writing again let us know that's
that's interesting insight. Um. But we did a little more
digging and we found out that it is Thomas Edwin Costello,
and we are going to keep digging. We hope that
you enjoyed this episode and we'd like to hear what
(39:06):
we should cover in upcoming episodes. There are a couple
of ways to find us. We're all over the internet. Uh,
check out Matt and I on Twitter. See us on
Facebook where we post a lot of stuff that we
never get to do shows on right. I was really
excited about that blood thing. I don't know, UM, and
follow our website stuff they don't want you to know
dot com. If you want to get past the social
(39:29):
media rigor morole and write to us, then we love
hearing your stories. We are going to do an episode
with that ghost story you you persuaded us. We had
so many people right in and say, don't tell us
it's an amazing story and then not cover it. So
that is on the way we promise UM. In the meantime,
let us know your stories. All of our best ideas
(39:50):
and all of our best stories come from our listeners,
so we want to hear from you. Our email address
is conspiracy at Discovery dot com. For more on this
topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube dot com slash
conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch on Twitter
(40:11):
at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
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