Gadgetory

somebody in the chat room was asking hi guys what is the most exciting news and extraterrestrials that we already here hi Barry you know I think the most exciting news about extraterrestrials is there are a lot of places they could live you know just 20 years ago I I mentioned Barnard's star which bakwin said he began in the early 60s there was speculation that you know there might be a planet here there was some evidence that were wobbling of the planet it turns out that wasn't the case but it was it's only been in the last 20 years that we have been able to detect planets around other stars so I think that is the the huge discovery there's a lot of real estate out there that is potentially inhabitable and and now we're realizing that earth-like planets are all over the place as well at least super Earths the other exciting thing is over the last 20-30 years we've come to better understand the extremes that life can live on here on earth you know I'm talking extremes of life like the the frozen tundra of the Arctic hydrothermal vents acid hot springs the core of nuclear reactors so once life takes hold it can survive and so it's looking all in all the more likely that our notion of what's a habitable world may need to be expanded to take into account the variety of environments that extraterrestrial life could proliferate in so it seems like everything that we're learning in the past decades is more and more support that there could be alien life out there some people think it's already being here I haven't seen it so I mean to see the evidence you're a psychologist right yeah and so you know I wonder like what given the work you're doing like what do you think what's your relationship with like human imagination because when you're dealing it seems like when you're dealing with the you know SETI the imagination takes you and all these kind of like fantastical places you know like Star Trek 2 conspiracy theories about area 51 and it seems like the imagination takes you in so many places that can distract from the reality of the actual science but at the same time that imagination can keep people interested on the work that you do do you either okay yeah I think so you're right imagination is great for engaging people there's something imaginative about the prospects of their being intelligence out there but if you look at the nature of how science happens that imagination plays an important role at the earliest stages as well so that you know imagination doesn't prove anything but imagination is great at generating ideas you know but would Kepler was trying to understand the motions of the planets he had this idea about the planets are moving within these perfect geometrical solid proportions it turned out it was wrong but it was really helpful to start thinking about things so I think the the what you need to always keep in mind is imagination is great for generating hypotheses and then you got to test those hypotheses and that's where some concrete data comes out