Gadgetory

welcome to the creative cast I am your host Eric McClure live from CNET's always busy Taos New Mexico Bureau and joining me live in the CNET Studios there in San Francisco are Kelsey Adams Jeff Sparkman and behind the controls today as always Steven Beecham and we also have a very special guest there in the studio today as well if you don't know his name you probably should because he's the man who is helping to shape the voice of our species if not our entire planet among many other titles he's the president of Medi International which stands for messaging extraterrestrial intelligence which is what we'll be talking with him about today please welcome dr. Douglas BA coach oh god so for the next 30 minutes or so we're gonna be talking about the search for alien intelligence and what do we do beyond just looking for et you can be a part of the conversation in our YouTube and livestream chat chat rooms and you can also tweet at us at crave see our AV e and at Eric C Mac with any questions or comments we'll be monitoring those so to start Doug a lot of people I think probably know what SETI is the the search for extraterrestrial intelligence but you've started a new organization just in the last couple of months here called a messaging extraterrestrial intelligence well what is that exactly what's Medi as you say SETI is well understood so the search for extraterrestrial intelligence using big radio telescopes to look for signals from alien civilizations at distant stars and so SETI has been going on for over 55 years now and it's getting bigger and better and more powerful every year but many looks at the flipside so at many international we're asking the question what happens if everyone out there in the cosmos is doing exactly what we're doing everyone's listening but no one is taking the initiative to make contact and so our core mission is to create messages that would be representative of humankind and send them out into the cosmos and you know messaging is also a bit broader we have to grapple with how to actually create a message and how do you understand communication and intelligence here on our own world but there's an interrelated suite of research and educational projects we have they're all related to this idea of innovative ways to make contact with extraterrestrial intelligence so I guess you know the first question a lot of people would ask and some of us some of the folks there in the room we've had conversations about know why is this something we would want to do I mean why is it a good idea I mean some might say it's potentially a dangerous idea depending on who hears the message or reads the message right right well I think the short answer is throughout human history we've learned a lot when we encounter new cultures and so encountering a radically alien culture gives us an opportunity to get a completely new perspective on ourselves but Eric you asked this great question it might be interesting but is it safe and no less a brilliant person than Stephen Hawking has said whatever you do do not transmit our location to the earth the extraterrestrials they may come and strip-mine our planet and you know who knows what would happen so we should shut up I guess my response to Stephen Hawking is twofold first of all when he said that when he gave her that warning back in 2009 he had no idea that planets like Earth are plentiful so look the man is indisputably a genius but he can't predict the future now we know that there are like planets everywhere the other point maybe even more important is that if there's a civilization that has the ability to travel between the stars and do whatever they went to us here they can pick up I Love Lucy Howard Stern and see that transmissions that are going out there so so we've already exposed ourselves the idea of being intentional about our messaging is saying let's not just let accidental leakage be our ambassadors let's decide what we want to say to another world so it's not you're not honestly pessimistic but you have to play them oh yeah okay good good good it's one thing to say yes they already know we're here but that doesn't necessarily mean that we are actively pestering them and try to get their attention you know we could get prioritized like oh well they're clearly challenging us let's go stop them where oh well they're clearly pacifist in a week let's go take them you know and so what we need to do is look at the motivations that they might have but if we look at human history we see that attempts to isolate ourselves from other civilizations typically hasn't turned out well and so that if in fact they do know that we're here already my stance is that it's best to take that message in control if they're actually going to come and arrive here then let's have an encounter with them and let's let them know that we want to engage but is it actually I mean isn't it maybe slightly more likely that our our relationship when we meet them will be you know that great cultural insight we get is more likely to be the smallpox equivalent you know like we're likely to be on the wiped out and of that scale well we're likely if the extraterrestrials get here they are technologically and superior to us so so the reality is you know they could do whatever they want but my position is if they are going to come here you know I don't want to just wait and cower in the corner and let them do whatever but let them know that there is more that they can benefit from from having us as intelligent interlocutors than simply to wipe us out that that that you know I think one of the challenges that people often have and one of the reasons people have been opposed to many in the past is the whole idea of what in the world do we have to say if they have the ability to travel between the stars or even if they're staying at home but there are a million years longer lived and we are what do we have to say that is a value you know in a sense I think it's almost a cosmic inferiority complex that we have but I would say look there may be wiser aliens out there or technologically powerful aliens there's never going to be a more human alien though so I think there's something unique about us that they can't create in the test tube very classic sci-fi perspective I think it's a no and I think that's true because you know this this isn't just about technology this is about you know what do we care about and so I think that's the other flipside of the benefit of doing this it's not even if we make contact but in the process of crafting the messages that we stand out we need to think about what do we care about how do we want to represent ourselves yeah so you you guys created a website called earth speaks which allows people to upload their messages to the aliens and and a lot of the people we're talking about you found it interesting that a lot of people were talking about that we don't think of ourselves as alone in the universe right and that's that's an important distinction for aliens to know that we were not that you know we're not so we don't think that we're so amazed we we don't think that we're so amazing you know one of the things SETI scientists have often speculated about is if we actually do make contact then the differences between cultures here on earth are going to seem miniscule in comparison of the differences between us and extraterrestrials and so the idea is that if we make contact it'll be sort of a unifying nature we won't think of ourselves as coming from different nations or religions yeah turns out that actually thinking about the messages we want to send start that process so one of the themes we saw in those earth speaks messages are it's not like I come from California or I'm a Buddhist or I'm a Christian but I'm a member of the planet Earth and we want to make contact that's cool very interesting what sorts of messages have you guys sent out any messages now I mean I know like Voyager sent out things a long time ago but are you guys sent to be actively sending messages now and what types of message are you sending we are our organization isn't sending messages but there have been over the last couple of decades a number of messages that have gone out as you mentioned the Voyager spacecraft went out with a metal recording images sounds of Earth greetings in 55 languages there has been the Pioneer plaque on a couple of Pioneer spacecraft that NASA has launched and there have been demonstrations of our ability to transmit so from the world's largest radio telescope in Arecibo Puerto Rico there was a powerful transmission in 1974 and a couple of follow up lines so we're very interested in if you go to our website and look at our strategic plan this outlines what our goals are over the next three years and our goal is to have messages go out but we want to really engage in a conversation about what should be in those messages and and are there rest I mean you've raised questions Kelsey about is it dangerous to do that we want to have that very transparent discussion what I hear when SETI scientists talk about this is that people are getting worried about this for no reason that you know again it's if the aliens can do us any harm it's too late and so let's take the message into our own hands so when I knew you were coming in Doug I actually dug up some reporting I did like a decade ago when I was a public radio reporter and I went down to a place in southern New Mexico where they're basically burying low-level nuclear waste about a half-mile under the ground and so I talked to the people who are trying to come up with what kind of signs would we put at this site so that you know 10,000 years down the road people know not to dig and to keep out you know how do you design a sign for a culture that's probably gonna be very different than ours if there is one and it strikes me is very similar to the kind of thing that you're working on only what you're working on is cosmically harder and you know what they came up with well I mean was almost cartoonish and and and so basic yeah that's it right there it's great it's great if the extraterrestrials have a face like we do but yeah but you're right so they wanted to communicate and and I suspect the folks who put that together we're not very sanguine about the English text being intelligible right but actually it and and the challenge of marking these nuclear waste sites so again the goal is make something that's going to be meaningful ten thousand years from now after languages have changed radically but make this also something that's not so intriguing that the aliens are going to take it as a challenge so you know one was to to put up something kind of dangerous and spiky and make it look like oh there's something hazardous here or you might you might leave a message but you can't construct it out of materials that are valuable if it's a valuable metal people are going to strip it away and the message won't remain so one of the one of the recommendations that a semiotician a scholar who focuses on the theory of science thomas sebeok had said is that you actually have to have what he called a nuclear priesthood a priesthood in which you actually carry on from generation to generation the message so that that message can be adapted to changing language and changing cultures and so that you don't leave the message to an artifact but you leave it to a community that has as its goal communicating that warning so considering an oral tradition is actually being more more lasting an oral tradition as being more reliable and you know we tend to think that the the written word is the sacrosanct the way of communicating but you know if you look at how some text sacred texts have been communicated early Buddhist writings were well writings they were actually there was a strong oral tradition long before a written tradition that doesn't mean it was inaccurate it's just they made a commitment to communicate orally there been any real specific strategies that have been developed yet for you know devising messages or how we think about these messages that we could possibly send out there have been and the the key is to try to figure out what is universal so aliens are not going to speak English or Swahili or French they're not going to speak any of our natural languages so what language do we have in common with an alien well if we're sending a radio signal to another world and they can build a radio telescope we know that we have one thing in common with them engineering and it seems likely that if you're going to be a savvy engineer you've got to know the basics of math at least two plus two equals four and so that's the basic idea of starting with a language that builds on fundamental math and scientific concepts and use that as a foundation but then the challenge of course is if we only say yeah we know about the periodic table of elements as well what's the point of this whole thing and so what we want to do is leverage one of those possibly universal languages to talk about something that is unique about ourselves so Steve mentioned the Voyager recording that has music from around Earth well if you think about it music is really kind of beautiful because in many ways the basic structure of music can be described in terms of mathematics and physics the things that an astronomer on other world should know about as well and yet it conveys something about our emotionality so those music you know Steve is playing now the sounds of a baby from the golden record and now that's that's part of humanity what about me so you're talking about music what about like Close Encounters of the Third Kind they have that musical piece do do do do do do you think there's any I think that's jeopardy there is now I wish I wish that the mothership would come to earth yeah and we could actually have this Jam that's right so I'm not counting on that but I do think the idea of communicating in a musical way really frees us up from this hegemony that math and science have had so you know the folks who are most interested in SETI are mathematicians and computer scientists and astronomers and so they tend to think about you know this is what I want to know about yeah but I think we also need to get out of that mindset and so think about alternative ways of communicating as well so now when you when you say I know I know you're joking but when you say you'd be excited if the the mothership came down you know so I wonder what your first response is emotionally when you hear stories like did you hear the story over the weekend that there were some tapes released by NASA that proved that Apollo 10 astronauts heard like alien music did you see doc going around the I didn't see it but you know we get contacted all the time by people who said I've had an encounter and my response is excellent show me something physical because I'm a scientist I need evidence it's it's the same standard we use when we're looking for a signal from another star we get a signal on a radio telescope it looks good but now we have to follow up to make sure it's not a glitch make sure it's not some smart graduate students at MIT perpetuating the hoax that we want to know if it's a real signal so if someone has evidence of an extraterrestrial having come here bring it to me and show it to me and I'd love to see it well actually we do have a video that we produce for CNET and it is of the the sound that they heard on Apollo 10 so I'll just play that real quick for it's only like 40 seconds okay very good Richard yeah it sounds like you know how to space-time music okay Stan my best one and three high voltage are preset that's one well that sure is weird music now get the whistling you know like an outerspace type thing so is that is that sort of like what you guys hear all the time I agree it sounds like weird news yeah it sounds like radio interference and so then the question is if you really think that's an indication of another intelligence where's the evidence of that so we we use a basic philosophical principle that is hundreds of years old Occam's razor which is the simplest explanation and you know I I'm hearing the audio recording of a technologically very sophisticated and yet a little bit bumpy and kind of seem to the pants operation the early space mission yeah my natural explanation is sounds like something kicking in on the radio so I don't I don't hear anything and I wish I did I wish I heard something you know the other thing to keep in mind and and this is true - when people see things in the sky that they can't explain I don't doubt people are seeing things they're making sense out of it the most reasonable explanation they can come up with it it must be an alien well human beings evolved to make sense out of a chaotic and and unpredictable world we're very good at that and if we don't know what something is we'll come up with an explanation the question is is that initial explanation that we come up with the actual true explanation and that's where we need to maintain skepticism you know in ways I'm glad to hear the x-files is coming on oh yes I feel like I'm sort of a cross between Mulder and Scully I want to believe but I need the evidence you you've had a close encounter I when I was in college I did see a UFO the one that you hear reports of with like the three red lights and a huge triangle and I did write a story for first seen it last year kind of finally I I found some evidence that finally debunks that experience but it was a real but it was a real experience you have the experience it was you you saw what couldn't otherwise be explained and that was year ago that you saw it and it takes a while to come up with you know how do you explain this and again this is the problem that we have in SETI as well I mean for people who followed steady fairly closely you've heard about the WoW signal so in the 1970s there's this this a huge signal that was detected at The Ohio State University Observatory the Big Ear and it looks like exactly what you would want to see but there's only one problem it's never replicated and so we require replication I don't have to look good but the problem is we're looking for things like our own radio and TV signals all the time so we need something that can be independently replicated as proof of an extraterrestrial well over the last six months I mean there's there has been a pretty interesting lead and you and I have corresponded about it in the past which is tabi star which is that star that has some crazy stuff orbiting it and it could be a swarm of comets or or perhaps alien mega-structure see what was what was your initial reaction you no matter what your emotional reaction was when you first heard the details what was not you were excited or you're like you got to be skeptical well it can be both because I'm excited because there's a specific target so again a little of the history the full name of the star is kic 846 2852 myelin preference is it's it's called tabbies star all over the place honestly I think it's a bit sexist so it was it was identified by an astronomer named Tabitha Boyajian let's call boy AG and star I mean there's the you know that there is one of the early stars that we just discovered very near Earth is Barnard star we don't call it edy star so boy aging star beautiful star because it was identified as by the Kepler mission NASA's Kepler mission which looks for a slight dimming of a planet as it travels between the the star and us here on earth so when that passed by go happens there's this minor Deming so an earth-sized planet it dims by maybe a million the wondrous thing about voyaging star is that dimming happened by up to 20% and when you and I talked back in november/december Eric the hope was that well there's a natural explanation maybe just at the right time Kepler was looking at this star there's a swarm of comets that went by and that's what accounted for it and there would be a freaky accident so why was Kepler looking at right just the right time freaky things happen when you're looking at a hundred fifty thousand stars so it could have been the case and so for several months the cometary explanation was the best explanation but now looks like that's off the table over the last couple of weeks an astronomer has pointed out who's gone back to the records over the last century and seeing that there's actually been a low-level dimming over the course of a hundred years so that would require a huge flock of comets and so the cometary explanation doesn't seem any good so you know it was a it was a one possibility that would suggest as maybe it's this huge mega structure that was created by extraterrestrial engineers put in orbit sometimes people talk about it as a Dyson swarm named after physicist Freeman Dyson so it's something in orbit maybe to capture the sunlight of That star and that's what's occluding us and so our question was if in fact there is an alien mega-structure might be there be aliens who are signaling to us so there have been observations at the SETI Institute Allen telescope array and Metis International is collaborating with an observatory in Panama bouquet de Panama to look for brief laser pulses bad news is we haven't seen Danny we didn't expect to and so that's the skepticism part of my reaction the initial reaction is what's great you know this this is the kind of thing that we would want to look at but then we have to actually look there and see if we see any evidence and so far no evidence of an alien civilization at least sending intentional signals right they'd have to the way you're looking as I understand it it would have to be really intentional it would have to be your terror TV signals if their TV signals you know the the III was making the case earlier that if you have if you're an alien civilization that has the ability to to travel to earth and do us any harm you can pick up our leakage signals that's not true for us I mean humans we our technology cannot pick up our lead leakage radiation even at the distance of the nearest star so for us to succeed in our contemporary SETI projects we need to have a directly transmitted signal now we have the technology to do that so you go to the world's largest radio telescope in Arecibo Puerto Rico this huge dish carved into the side of the earth that can transmit powerful signals used in asteroid studies it's mapping these earth-threatening asteroids that comes swooping by earth periodically and that can also be used and has been used to transmit messages so you know on a galactic scale if there are civilizations out there I'm guessing we're pretty rudimentary but even a young civilization like ours has the ability to send a message that another comparably young civilization could pick up and so that's that's what MIDI International is interested in using that capacity we're not gonna we're not going to let you know any anything from any of the Sigourney Weaver alien movies that could come to earth and do us harm know about us but if there's another twin of Earth with a comparable technology to ours that could be a message that really does provide the first indication that we're here so is there a list of likely targets right now if there was a message that was that was ready and we were ready to send it out well what would we aim it at like Proxima Centauri or you know a gene star what III would I certainly sent one to boy AG and star why not you know the only downside is it takes close to 1,500 years to get there so a reply wouldn't be for another three thousand years that light that were seen from boy AG and star right now left shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire so you know for anyone who has any concerns about what's going to happen on earth actually picking a target far away it has a nice element my preference would actually be to target stars that are close to Earth so you know one way to think about it is well how many stars are there that are even close to Earth so if you go out 25 parsecs it's an astronomical unit it's about a little over 80 light years the distance light can travel in in 80 years they're about 2,800 stars and from Arecibo you could target about 1/10 that they're about 800 or so of those stars and I would sample those stars that can be targeted from Arecibo that we already know have planets around them there are 27 of those targets but on the other hand what we're learning every day is that almost every star has planets around them there are a lot of stars that we haven't detected their planets but just on statistical rounds we've done enough of a sampling to know that planets are everywhere so there are a lot of advantages to targeting nearby stars and the advantage there is you know at its best Mette is a long-term project but potentially success could come in decades maybe centuries rather than millennia if we focus on relatively nearby stars so you know there's this there's this concept called the Fermi paradox that I'm sure you're familiar with which you know basically says well space is so huge and gigantic that there should be aliens out there but then where are they so I wonder what what's your answer are they are they dead are they really far away yet to evolve what's most likely do you think well there are a lot of explanations consistent with the fact that they're not here you know there's some people would say well the aliens are here they're the UFOs but again I haven't seen evidence that convinces me and so then the general argument of Fermi's paradox is that if if they've been around for millions of years even if space travel is kind of slow then why haven't they come here well one possibility is that they do have an ability you know maybe in fact even the nearby stars are populated but they're simply waiting for us to take the initiative you know if you use the Star Trek analogy maybe they have a prime directive but we all know that in Star Trek once that less advanced civilisation says hello then the floodgates are open and you can communicate whatever you want so you know that's what I would like to test I'd like to test the zoo hypothesis I've actually target all of the nearby stars and see whether we can evoke a response so you know I think one reasonable explanation for the Fermi paradox is it just no paradox at all I mean it's potentially possible it's conceivable to travel between the stars it takes a long time and anything you'd really want you can get by sending an interstellar email so it you can travel at the speed of light it's a lot cheaper to communicate by radio signals laser pulses than it is to actually physically move yourself and so that's what SETI and Metis are based on the idea that we can we can get most different all of what we really want to know about another civilization a lot faster and a lot cheaper by sending and receiving electromagnetic signals hey Douglas I have a couple questions from our chat room yeah someone asked Gareth Glover asked he's making a big big big fit about not being it not having his question ass right away okay yeah Gareth Glover does the United Nations have a protocol in place for first contact if we do make contact video the United Nations does not but you know if Gareth has an inroad to the secretary-general of the United Nations send the contact information because I would love it if the United Nations made this their top priority the reality is they haven't in fact there is an international setting group called the International Academy of astronautics that has a group of ongoing SETI people who've been working 40 or more years and they've developed protocols so the protocols that guide what happens if we make contact have been developed by the scientists who are actually doing SETI and and so those protocols say if we detect a signal first of all confirm it and then transmit and those protocols also say that in the event of detecting a signal there should be no reply until there has been international consultation but one of the big debates of that SETI group within the International Academy of astronautics over the course of several years was well should that protocol applied before we've made contact and the the majority a strong majority said repeatedly we're not even going to touch that issue because the situation is quite different you know if we actually make contact you can bet the United Nations will take this up but in the meantime your hands are tied if you're waiting to get permission from the United Nations you know if you look at international space law to give you guidelines about what to do one of the basic principles of international law is that if something isn't prohibited it's allowed and we've tried to get space lawyers involved and what they point out is that the legal framework isn't easy to apply to extraterrestrials because the laws are meant to regulate the interactions between human beings they're not even constructed to regulate what we do with other beings so the the basic restrictions on communicating are at this point regulatory you need a license from your home country to be able to transmit and so those are the ways that there are some restrictions on communication does anyone know when the space lawyers reality show goes that's right I know some great people who'd be guests for you I have a couple more there's a lot of people in our livestream chat that are saying can the aliens please take Donald Trump with them when they come geez but also there's someone Weapon X and our YouTube chat is asking asking do you believe that aliens are already here and live amongst us you know I don't because I've had no one come up to me and introduce him or her or itself so it is easy to create a conspiracy theory about there being hidden information honestly I don't know that the US government or any other major government is able to keep a secret like that I mean they can barely deliver the mail so so I don't I don't I don't hold out a lot but but what do you do with the conspiracy theory of saying the aliens are here but they're keeping it a secret I don't know what to do with that so I haven't seen the evidence again if there is some concrete physical evidence that you can share with me I want to see it I heard some news story that Hillary Clinton said that she would at least release all these documents about aliens if she was president but we know Jay was a joke you know Jimmy Carter became president said I want to know and I know release the information and I don't know if you got follow-through or not but if we don't know anything since then so you know I wonder taking kind of the the long view of things you know I imagine with the work you do you probably end up thinking a lot about the human race as much as think about alien races so I wonder if overall if you would consider yourself pessimistic or optimistic about our long-term future and let me frame this kind of in terms of you know the way the the new space industry is is very often framed you know people like Elon Musk say we need to we need to get to Mars to become a multiplanetary species because we're ruining the earth and so there's this very pessimistic view but I've been to a few space confidence one guy at the Space conference I started talking about you know I don't care what happens on earth we need to colonize you know Mars and and the asteroid belt because you imagine what a hundred quadrillion humans like the potential of that which is not a view you hear very often I wonder which one resonates more with you yeah I think it's a cop-out to say that we can't control our own fate and so we need a back-up plan I mean I think it's fine I think it's good to explore I think it's it's sort of in our genes we're an exploratory species so let's go out there but yeah I sometimes hear people say you know if we discover aliens out there if we if we actually pick up a signal from an extraterrestrial finally we'll have vindication we can do it we can last that long we don't need to look outside to get that vindication even if no one else has done it humankind should do it and you know the big opposition within SETI circles to a sustained Metis project there's not any concerns about aliens it's a concern that we're not mature enough to be able to sustain a project that's going to last over the course of centuries and millennia my view is we have nothing to lose you know I think the the having the image of humans as as a species that can look to the future make plans for the future and hope and act as if we will be around to get a reply back can do nothing but good and so in in a subtle way I think that the actions of preparing for contact and preparing to be around can have a salutary impact on how we view our self as a species and it is as much an act of hope as it is an act of scientific exploration I'm curious if you are aware of or your thoughts on the organization belong now which is also based in time Cisco and have a great bar everybody the interval don't belong now I I agree go to the interval the long now has exactly the mindset that we mean because they are building a clock that will last on a timescale of ten thousand years and you know scientific research is not funded on ten thousand year timescales we're looking and you know when when scientific research is funded by Congress you've got representatives who are elected every two years and senators every six years everyone is thinking on such short timescales I mean if if something comes popular it suddenly the president's out there saying then we're going to Mars we're going to Mars and even if you get an individual president who's committed to going to Mars that president has eight years and a new president comes in and up ends the agenda and says I'm sorry not Mars asteroids so the mindset of the long now is the perfect mindset of saying we humans at the beginning of the 21st century are used to instant gratification we want everything in this now but if we're going to survive as a species we need to extend that now and so that it lasts until the end of the day and the end of the week and the year in the decade and the century and the millennium maybe even 10,000 years but when funding and political support can change on a dime how do you how do you mean in practical terms work for the long no well I think you have to first of all look for some funding that can sustain a long term project like an endowment and you identify models that aren't as resource intensive so for example SETI is typically operated by big projects a big project that takes millions of dollars per year it's great you build it up you have that money for a decade if the money disappears then the project disappears and even if you get more funding a few years later you have to build the group from scratch so the approach we're using that many international is a different model where we're using more modest telescopes like the one that been shoots is operating go to optical SETI org and you'll see his Observatory in Panama and that is it's not just a run-of-the-mill backyard astronomers telescope but it's it is technically sophisticated he's a retired engineer he's put his heart and soul in this but it is operated by someone who's doing it out of love I mean the true meaning of being an amateur and so that is sustainable that he has the resources on his own to make his contribution so you combine that with other smaller scale observatories and we can really have an ongoing effort that isn't necessarily n't on these massive influxes of money that can sustain itself over the course of decades citizen science on an organized scale and you know the beauty of that and one of the things that that we encountered when we were using that telescope to observe Boyajian star is it was visible from Panama at the worst possible time in Panama because it was the rainy season so out of the course of about four weeks of observing we only had a half a dozen clear night so you want other observatories where it's a good observing and you can coordinate the activities so there's a modest amount you can do at one location but you multiply that by 10 or by a hundred you can get a lot done and if we actually do detect a signal so we're looking at by aging star we see exactly what we want we want to make sure that someone else can track that star when it sets in Panama as a visible somewhere else so the most important question before we wrap up yessum are you a sci-fi fan and if so which which franchises you know III have to say that Close Encounters is the one it had special meaning because you know I was I was a kid that was about 16 when this thing came out and the aliens come and you're actually able to make contact so that would have to be toward the top of the list if you're looking at franchises I would say Star Trek and from the perspective of creating an interstellar message or really trying to understand aliens I'm going to give the first half a dozen episodes or so of enterprise when they're linguist was really grappling with trying to understand you know it's endlessly fascinating I could have taken five seasons of that grappling myself but in sci-fi you have to make concessions and actually let everyone speak English pretty soon but I'll give those first few episodes of the enterprise relaunch alright great well before we wrap things up anything else you want people to know about Medi yeah check out our website it's Medi org come to our Facebook page we are always updating the materials and keep on the lookout for what we'll be doing in the coming months we'll be doing more to really grapple with the whole question of what is intelligence here on earth and what does that mean beyond and so I look forward to letting people know about that as well that's a whole can of worms ba coach thank you very much for joining us on the clave cast and we'll be sure to keep in touch and keep people informed on your work here on crave on SEANET and I want to thank everyone else Stephen Beecham thank you so much for helping set this up and of course Kelsey Adamson Jeff Sparkman Bonnie Burton is sick today we hope you are feeling better and we'll see you on the next crave cast thanks for tuning in see you next time