Bill Diamond: Listening to the Universe

Written By Johnathan Hatherly

Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Wonder of Existence

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For centuries, we've looked to the stars and wondered if we are alone. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is more than a scientific pursuit; it is an expression of our most fundamental questions about who we are, if we are alone, and what it means to be a part of something so incomprehensibly vast. 

It's an exploration not just of the stars, but of the questions that lie within us—questions about connection, about the unknown, and about the profound search for meaning that drives us all.

Today, our search lands us in a conversation with Bill Diamond, CEO of the SETI Institute, where he guides a team of over 100 scientists, researchers, and administrators across the globe on a mission to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe. Their work extends beyond the technicalities of signal detection; touching on what it means to be human in a universe that is as mysterious as it is vast.

Today, we explore the intersections of science and wonder, the ethical dilemmas that arise in our search for discovery, and the idea that love itself could be a force that transcends the boundaries of space and time.

This is not just a conversation about the cosmos; it is an exploration of the human spirit and the questions that have always driven us to look up and wonder.

Guest

Bill Diamond is a Silicon Valley technology veteran and current President and CEO of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.  The SETI Institute is a nonprofit astrophysics and astrobiology research and education organization focused on the study of life in the Universe.   

With over 30 years of experience in laser photonics and optical communications networks, X-ray imaging, and semiconductor processing technologies.   Bill has helped lead numerous venture-backed start-ups to Fortune 100 multinationals, 

Bill holds a B.A. in physics from Holy Cross College and a Master’s in Business Administration from Georgetown University. He is a past member of the Advisory Board for the McDonough School of Business Administration at Georgetown and is a current member of the Optical Society of America, the International Astronomical Congress and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Science and Innovation Council, BASIC, in San Francisco.

For more information about the incredible work of SETI, visit www.SETI.org.

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Transcript

[00:01:22] Joh: Bill, thank you for sharing this space and time with me today. I'm excited to see where our conversation takes us.

[00:01:40] Bill: Well, I'm happy to be here, John, and grateful for the opportunity and, um, look forward to your questions because I, I know we're going to delve into some really interesting directions here.

[00:01:48] John: You know, just to get us started, I would love to hear your thoughts on something that been on my mind. When you think about the work you do at SETI. What's the, what's the one idea or theme that you feel drives this mission forward, you know, what, what keeps you connected to this search on a, on a more personal level?

[00:02:06] Bill: I would say, um, that one of the things that I think is interesting about this endeavor and this search, if you will, is its connection to our place in the cosmos, but also more specifically our place on our own planet. In other words. It's, it's an interesting kind of, I don't know, duality or paradox, if you will, that our search for life beyond earth.

[00:02:31] is really informed by understanding life on earth. So as much as our endeavor is, you know, pointing telescopes and instruments away from our planet, there's also a lot of work that is done with instruments and observations and analytics on our planet, you know, including fundamental questions like, you know, what is life and how did it start?

[00:02:50] So I think one of the more interesting connections that I personally have to this. Endeavor is that the process of doing this work informs us also about ourselves, about what it means to be human. And I think that's a kind of a very profound perspective and kind of an interesting opportunity to, uh, to have in an organization to pursue something, which hopefully helps us understand ourselves as much as it aims to understand a scientific question that we're trying to pursue.

[00:03:20] John: Yeah, that really resonates with me. And, you know, I think that's one of the amazing things that science kind of brings forth and in the work that it does. There's not often a talk about love with science, but when I think back to, you know, Albert Einstein penned a letter to his daughter and he talked about love being this universal force and that it was this profound and very capable thing that could really.

[00:03:44] You know, I think the words they use with conquer all, you know, if it's often seen as this uniquely human experience yet, do you think that love or, you know, whatever analogous force, you know, whatever words that we can, you know, conjure up for it might play a role in the evolution of more advanced civilizations?

[00:04:01] Bill: I think that whether the concept would be love as we know it or imagine it, or some other, let's just say benevolent type of force, I don't know. But I certainly think it, this notion of Let's say, you know, to the extent that we associate love as, as a positive human attribute, as something that, uh, expresses kindness and concern and empathy and and so forth, there's this question about life beyond earth and looking for life beyond earth, and concerns about, well, what if the life that we find beyond Earth, if it's intelligent and technological, isn't friendly?

[00:04:35] You know, there have been very serious, very prominent scientists who've been very concerned about that topic, and I guess it's a fair question to ask. My answer to that question, however, is that as humans, 100 years into being a technological civilization, we define sort of, Invention of radio and the use of the electromagnetic spectrum as, as the beginnings of our technology, you know, here we are 100 years later and due to, I guess, the unintended consequences of our industry and technology, we find ourselves in some pretty precarious predicaments with respect to things like climate change and so forth and, um, one might assume that other advanced civilizations, if they followed a similar trajectory of Going from primitive beings through becoming agrarian to industrial to technological that they've also gone through this situation of self induced challenges that need to be overcome if they're going to have a long, you know, long existence.

[00:05:37] And, um, I think that for example, here on earth, if we are going to solve the problems of our own making and have a long term. A future in two thousands or tens of thousands of years, that's only going to be possible if we're able to come together as a species, if we're able to understand that we're all in this together, we're on an island, and if we don't love one another in some capacity and work together and cooperate and stop killing each other, then We're going to kill us all, you know, eventually things will go so badly south that we will not survive as a species and sadly will take a lot of other species with us.

[00:06:11] So in that sense, I think that the discovery of another technological civilization, which statistically speaking would be likely to be much older and therefore more advanced than us. Would I think, you know, be evidence that this is a civilization more likely to be benevolent than malevolent because they've solved their problems and address their concerns like energy consumption and waste production and so on by coming together and, and understanding, you know, the benefits of, if not love, at least cooperation and empathy.

[00:06:45] And so, yes, I think there is something to that. Whatever label we might put on it, you know, I'll let others decide, but I think that concept is not at all unreasonable.

[00:06:55] John: Yeah, I get back to this idea of some of the intersecting some of the more spiritual traditions, uh, in societies and my background, you know, comes from thinking about Sufism specifically.

[00:07:08] And thinking about how they frame this idea of love being a divine force that really does connect everything in the universe and holds it together in whatever ways and shapes it forms. It also gets me thinking into thinking about other philosophical traditions that they explore this sort of transcending dualities, right?

[00:07:26] You know, we get into talking about past love and past that, such as life and death or matter and energy. You know, do you think it could be the advanced civilizations? that we're searching for exist in a state that defies our current understanding of those concepts?

[00:07:41] Bill: Whether they exist in a state that defies our understanding of those concepts or exist in a state that defies our ability to observe them or detect them or sense their presence in some way, you know, I'm not sure.

[00:07:53] I mean, I think that one of the challenges And in SETI as an endeavor in astrobiology, more broadly, just searching for life, even in its most basic forms beyond earth, is that we have to be open to imagining life as we don't know it. We can search for life as we do know it, but our search technologies and techniques are limited to what we can imagine, limited to what we have available.

[00:08:16] And, and, and limited to what, you know, phenomena might actually be out there to detect. So you know, in that sense, it is constrained. And yet, you know, we're therefore compelled to ask questions like, well, we, we know that we have the ability. But he, to detect certain kinds of technologies, if they are existing beyond earth, we know that we have the ability to detect so called bio signatures or signs of life, which might exist in the composition of exoplanet atmospheres.

[00:08:46] For example, we know we have the technologies to perhaps look for extinct or extant life on a place like Mars or Enceladus Europa places right in our own backyard. But do we have the ability to, you know, look for Intelligence, so, you know, we know that life imparts signatures on its environment, life and environment co evolve, right?

[00:09:07] This is co evolution of life and environment is, is a fundamental concept and very important. You know, it's a dynamic process and life impacts environment, environment shapes and impacts life. Um, so, you know, If we're looking for, uh, you know, life beyond earth, we can, of course, look for those ways in which life impacts or impart some signature on its environment.

[00:09:30] And that can be, you know, in the atmosphere of a planet, it can be on what's on the surface of a planet, it can be in the form of technological phenomena that are clearly engineered and that we can detect. But what about intelligence? So, you know, there's been life on this planet for a few billion years and for several hundred million years, there's been intelligent life on this planet.

[00:09:52] There's been technological life on this planet for only a hundred years. So, you know, another planet that might be full of intelligent, complex life, but not technological, uh, but maybe beyond the reach of our instruments to look at their, their Atmospheres could we detect that this does intelligence and complexity in part a signature on its environment that we might be able to detect.

[00:10:12] We don't know the answer to that, but it's the kind of question that we also ask. So we do try to go beyond the purely technical. Modalities that we have available to us to think about how else might we look? What other considerations should we have? What are the kinds of phenomena might be able to to look for?

[00:10:31] So by no means do we feel that anything that we're doing could be considered to be comprehensive or all encompassing? Absolutely not. We're far too primitive for that. But we're making whatever effort we can.

[00:10:43] John: Yeah. Yeah. I would guess as scientists, you would make those assumptions that there's no way to be completely sure of anything, right?

[00:10:49] And there's no way to be completely observing all the things that we could possibly be looking at, because that would go against the idea of being a scientist. Right.

[00:10:58] Bill: Then we'd also be out of a job.

[00:11:02] John: That's awesome. Yeah, I do think it invites us to consider some of the ideas around Bohr and how he thought about, you know, You know, the universe as a, as an entire living entity, right?

[00:11:12] You know, you talk about intelligence and what it means to search for intelligent life, whether it's, you know, some of the more philosophically leaning scientists in the world or a lot of the spiritual traditions, there's this idea that, you know, whether it's implicate order or all of the other different kinds of conversations around it, there's this idea that the, Either the world itself or the universe itself is a complete living organism in and of itself.

[00:11:35] And so what does it mean to search for intelligent life in that idea?

[00:11:40] Bill: You know, I mean, there's so many sub questions that come from that. Like, um, for example, you talk about the universe as a living organism. What's a living organism? You know, scientists do not have an answer that is universally agreed upon for even what is the definition of life, let alone, you know, sub definitions for what is a living organism.

[00:11:58] So, you know, we have to be a little bit careful because, you know, we're, we're bound to impart. Human ideas and philosophies and perspectives on nature that may not be appropriate. I mean, the concept of a living organism may be something, you know, that we are endeavoring to impose on something like the universe, like it's a consciousness or so on, because this is, you know, something we see in ourselves and are trying to understand and we're trying to, you know, appreciate.

[00:12:31] You know, why we even exist and how we got here and, and so on. Um, and you know, are we the, the emergent product of a, of a conscious universe? And I think that's kind of an impossible question to, to answer, but an interesting question to ask. You know, there are fascinating realities like the structure of super clusters of galaxies.

[00:12:51] If you look at them at sufficiently distant scale, they look a lot like a neural network. The way that galaxies and strands of them are interspersed in our known universe and our observable universe. So before I think we can start putting words like, you know, living organism or consciousness on a phenomenon like this, we, we observe, you know, I, I think we just have to be careful that we're not taking human ideas, human constructs and concepts and applying them to nature in a way that isn't, is maybe interesting, but not quite.

[00:13:26] Accurate, but again, uh, there are, you know, I, I feel, for example, that life is an emergent process that life, my personal feeling about life, and I hope, I hope that I'm quoted in the future as the person who said this, my feeling is that one of the most remarkable things we might discover about life is that it's not remarkable at all.

[00:13:48] Not that it isn't interesting, but meaning it's not, it's common, it's, it's everywhere. It's going to be all over the place. And I think it's just as we have learned fairly recently that planets are ubiquitous and that the process of planet formation is a natural byproduct of the formation of stars. So, uh, from my perspective, I think it's not unreasonable to think that the process of life or the emergence of life may be a natural phenomena that is a natural byproduct of the formation of planets.

[00:14:16] And when planets have the right. You know, set of circumstances, um, you know, life is just going to happen. And you know, we know in our own galaxy, there are tens of billions of planets that are similar to earth in terms of size and, and distance from their host star, that at least they are theoretically habitable.

[00:14:34] So does that imply a consciousness on the part of the universe or not? I don't know. That's probably above my pay grade, but it certainly is a really interesting question.

[00:14:46] John: Yeah, you talked about the superclusters and the first time I learned about that was the Laniakea supercluster that I was reading about.

[00:14:53] I think it was 2019 that it may have been discovered, but it was quite recent. Really?

[00:14:58] Bill: Yeah.

[00:14:58] John: Remember looking at that structure going, Oh, I've seen that before. It's right outside of my yard, then I feel like the first time you see it, you can't unsee it in everything you walk around and go like, Oh, Oh, there it is again.

[00:15:10] And there it is again. And now it's in the cloud now. It's everywhere.

[00:15:13] Bill: Well, one of the things we think about a lot in, in this search. Is there's three ways to look for life in the universe that we currently deploy one is in situ that means sending technology to a physical place and that's what we're doing with the perseverance rover and other technologies that we send to bodies within our own solar system.

[00:15:33] There's remote sentencing, which is using telescopes. Orbiting instrumentation and so forth to look at a distance at a phenomena and see if there are signs of life. The James Webb Space Telescope is designed to do spectroscopic analysis of exoplanet atmospheres and tell us their composition. And some of those compositions might suggest that, you know, the presence of life by virtue of the ingredients not being, you know, sustainable or stable as an atmosphere, unless there's some biological process, um, happening below that's feeding them.

[00:16:03] And then the third way to look for life is to look for signs of technology, which you can do over great distances. And those would be, you know, radio transmissions or even laser pulses or things like that. But in terms of looking for life on a, on a place like Mars or other bodies within our own solar system, one of the, one of the tenants is, you know, if you want to, if you're looking for life, follow the water.

[00:16:25] And of course we know that water is also ubiquitous in the universe. Water is everywhere. So on a planet like Mars, you know, go, go where the water is. And On the one hand, we don't necessarily disagree with that, that approach, but one of our approaches is follow the patterns. And what you just talked about is a pattern, you know, the, the supercluster having a pattern that looks familiar to us.

[00:16:47] It looks like a neural network. It's interesting that you'll see similar patterns, for example, in the gypsum fields of the Atacama desert, where cyanobacteria. Form, you know, these colonies, which if you look at the surface of this landmass from an appropriate distance, you, you see a pattern like a, like a neural network of, of, of structures or, or different shades of color that, that's, you know, belie the presence of, of these cyanobacteria.

[00:17:13] So patterns are really interesting and, you know, patterns that we observe and that repeat at different scales, certainly I think, you know, tell us something interesting about, about nature.

[00:17:25] John: You know, my educational background in mathematics and fractal geometry and thinking about that. It's very much that idea, right?

[00:17:33] Bill: For sure.

[00:17:34] I

[00:17:34] John: don't know how much of a science sci fi geek you are, but I grew up watching Star Trek. There's this idea of the prime directive that we shouldn't interfere with civilizations that aren't as advanced. And this idea that we should let them be, and it gets me back to sort of these moral or ethical kind of conversations, you know, as SETI progresses in its mission, there's this potential right for discovering extraterrestrial life and becoming increasingly real, I think in our lifetime.

[00:18:03] Right. I think it, I think SETI talks about this a lot, but it's something I truly believe too that we're, we're on the cusp of something really interesting as a civilization. How do we prepare for that sort of moral? And ethical responsibility that, that would actually have for, for society as a whole.

[00:18:21] Bill: It's a very good question. I also, you know, grew up watching Star Trek. And of course, I loved that program. And, and, and I found some of the ideas that had, that had explored, you know, quite fascinating in this notion. Of a prime directive that it says, you know, you find some civilization that's not as advanced, you know, leave it alone or don't interfere.

[00:18:40] And, uh, which was interesting because I think that also implied don't, don't, don't help either. You know, that's, that's a certain level of interference, you know, let nature take its course, if you will. You know, certainly one of the things is that I, I think leads to the so called dark forest theory of, you know, Be careful about, you know, finding the aliens because, you know, you may not like what you find is again the imposition of human experience.

[00:19:04] I mean, human beings don't have a good history when it comes to a prime directive when, you know, exploring other lands on our own planet, right? We've, we've exploited resources. We've exploited or, you know, intentionally or unintentionally killed native inhabitants, et cetera. So, you know, the let's say the westward expansion, Yeah.

[00:19:24] Yeah. Of the human species from from Europe to the Americas and other locations, you know, did not go well for for native populations. And there was clearly no prime directive in place at that time. Maybe, you know, in retrospect, looking back at those episodes. Gives a rise to our thinking, you know, there should be something like a prime directive.

[00:19:43] I would like to think that in forming protocols for how we end up dealing with a discovery, and I agree with you, by the way, that, you know, discovery of some sort is imminent. And, and that includes everything from, On the low end of the scale, you know, microbes on Mars or elsewhere in our own solar system to advance civilizations beyond our solar system, which are more likely to be more advanced than we are not less advanced, but in any case, so I do think we're on the cusp and I think it is time that we start thinking collectively and globally about how we respond to such a discovery.

[00:20:22] I would like to think that we also have this idea that we don't want to interfere with things that we observe. So for example, from a scientific point of view, we're not so anxious to go to Mars with a lot of people and equipment and hardware and set up camps and then look for life and find life only to find out that what we're doing is finding evidence of our own existence there that we've interfered with that, you know, previously pristine environment.

[00:20:50] You know, so, and we're not really fans of this, uh, you know, Elon Musk's notion of conquer Mars. Or, you know, conquering any place that, that might have life. We'd rather let, you know, life there proceed. But how we respond as a civilization and as individual governments in society, I think is something that needs to be looked at, you know, more actively.

[00:21:14] We are, in fact, starting a working group at the Institute on, you know, post detection protocol for that very reason. And we hope to be able to. Converse with and influence bodies like the United Nations and so on. But the end of the day, any agreement is only as good as all relevant parties, uh, you know, being willing to sign up to it and, and enforce it.

[00:21:32] And again, I would hope that the better parts of human nature would prevail and, and have us, uh, develop a prime directive. But, uh, Also, again, the response to a discovery will have a lot to do with the nature of the discovery, you know, if we do discover microbes on Mars or say life on Enceladus Europa, it's going to be profound because of what it implies, but it's not going to be all that impactful in terms of, well, we're not going to have a conversation with, you know, bacteria.

[00:22:00] Um, we're not going to have the kind of interaction that people might hope for in, in terms of our, I guess, human. Wish that we're not alone. Uh, on the other hand, if we find evidence of a technological civilization, you know, if they're within 20, 30 light years, we could have a conversation if they're 1000 or 10, 000 light years away.

[00:22:19] You know, we're not going to have a conversation or much interaction. We're not even going to know if they still exist. Um, so there's such a wide range of possible outcomes in this endeavor that it will be impossible to sort of establish a consensus. comprehensive protocol that will cover all eventualities.

[00:22:35] But it is, you know, time that we start thinking about this and start thinking about about the human response and the societal response and the religious response and so forth.

[00:22:44] John: Yeah, I think the more the different parts of thinking that the world comes to whether it's science or spirituality or political or all those things at some point in the course of our evolution and understanding of ourselves, they're going to intersect more and be able to have those conversations in a more Um, fruitful way that it's not so siloed and people off here doing this people off here doing that where there's better conversations around those things.

[00:23:07] So I do hope that that is something that happens. Otherwise, we're screwed.

[00:23:11] Bill: Well, you know that it's an interesting notion because, you know, we think about these. Disciplines, if you want to call it that, of, you know, politics or science or religion or so forth. And, and we do think of them as, as functioning in silos, but in reality they are part of an interconnected whole, right?

[00:23:30] And, but science is the same. And if you think about it, you know, science through its modern history in particular is very deconstructionist by nature, right? We take things apart, we compartmentalize and we give them labels like physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and so on. Nature is not organized that way.

[00:23:48] You know, this is a human construct designed to help us understand what's going on. But in nature, biology, chemistry, physics, you know, it's, et cetera, astronomy, astrophysics are all part of an interconnected whole, and, you know, one of the things that we also endeavor to do at the institute is, is to connect the dots again, is to bring the dots together.

[00:24:08] Back these pieces like, okay, we've, we've gained incredible insights and understandings by breaking things down and taking deep dives into certain disciplines. But, you know, at some point now you need to step back and say, okay, now let's put all these pieces back together and see how they function as a system.

[00:24:24] So I think maybe we can have those similar conversations at the societal level. Like, maybe we need to look at science and religion and politics and You know, even economics in, in, in the context of they're all part of a complex and integrated whole. You know, maybe we should think about having, you know, more open conversation and discourse between these silos and, uh, and, and break those silos down as you, uh, as you mentioned

[00:24:49] John: These considerations that we're having, they really bring us back to this idea of there's something deeply human about this need to understand things and to connect the dots and to, to find our place in the cosmos and all the different things.

[00:25:01] And I think in the many ways that, you know, the search reflects our, our own longings, right? It's buyers to connect with just something. Greater than ourselves,

[00:25:12] Bill: You know, as, as unfathomable as it is. I think it's also equally disturbing to have this notion that we are actually alone in the universe. That this is the only place in the known universe where, where life has happened or where intelligence and and so forth has happened.

[00:25:29] I think. You know, statistically, the probability that we're alone in the universe is zero at this point. But nevertheless, you know, we, I, I think collectively also don't want the answer to be we're alone, you know, and I think this explains why, you know, almost half the population of the United States believes in UFOs.

[00:25:47] I think that, That says more about human nature than it does about the reality of UFOs. It says that we want to believe there's something out there and perhaps somebody or some civilization or entity that we can interact with, maybe learn from or benefit from, or, you know, who knows? But the idea of isolation, I guess, is a scary thought.

[00:26:06] John: Oh, it totally is. You know, I'm going to re reference this movie over and over again, right? Because I have my whole life for, I guess, 28 years. Um, that movie, Contact, in Carl Sagan's work, and there's a quote from, I believe it's when the alien was talking to the protagonists of the movie, who I believe is also based off of Jill Tartar, who had a lot to do with SETI's founding.

[00:26:25] And, See, in all of our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other. And it's, that quote has been in the back of my head every day of my life walking forward. And it's just something I definitely believe it's one of the things that makes us profoundly human.

[00:27:06] Bill: Absolutely. Look, why would we even seek, uh, you know, an answer to this question if we didn't want the answer to be yes, we're not alone. That we found something. Why would we even bother? If we had this preconceived notion that we were alone, you know, and, and, or if we didn't care, we wouldn't look. But we care deeply, I think, and profoundly, and earnestly, and don't want the answer to, you know, be the null answer that, no, that's it, guys, sorry, you're all by yourselves, you know.

[00:27:37] And, uh, people will ask me like, well, so, you know, do you, do people at the Institute believe that life exists beyond And my answer, which is somewhat tongue in cheek, but somewhat not as I said, look, you know, we have a questionnaire that everybody has to fill out. When they come here and we ask them if they believe in life beyond earth and the answer is no, we don't hire them, you know,

[00:27:58] but no, it's, it's, it's, it's deeply human. It's a pursuit, not only born out of our fundamental curiosity, which I guess makes us human, but it's born out of a desire not to be alone where we're, we're a social beings. And, you know, and other species on our planet are also social as we know. And so there's something about, you know, social interaction and, and, uh, that, that I think is just deeply ingrained in our DNA probably.

[00:28:25] John: Yeah. You bring up a really interesting idea about the, um, about socialness and, and how groups form and that there's this, it's not even just in humans, but there's this social ability to the universe itself. Right. And. Things come together in certain ways and there's groupings of things, right? We talk about super clusters or we can get down into much smaller scales of things, but it's something that.

[00:28:45] Um, seems to be a universal trait in this idea that that's just a underlying part of, of, of everything. And I think that this search for EI extraterrestrial intelligence is, is definitely just also a search for ourselves and our own potential and limitations and right. Our place.

[00:29:01] Bill: Absolutely. I mean, you know, uh, again, I, I think that one of the questions that we are, you know, Pursuing the answer to while not asking directly and said he has an endeavor is why do we even exist?

[00:29:16] How did this happen? How did we happen? How did life start here? How did life evolve here to ultimately form, you know, complex organisms, consciousness and intelligence, you know, language and communication, and ultimately, you know, technology, how did that happen? And so this notion of why we even exist, and what is our place in the cosmos?

[00:29:37] Transcribed is very much at the heart of the endeavor to look for, you know, life beyond earth.

[00:29:44] John: It's a, it's a true paradox, right? And I think that whether it's Martin Heidegger or Stephen Hawking, you know, the greatest minds in the world have, have really dived deep into that idea about this paradox of existence and why we're even, we're even here.

[00:29:59] Bill: Yeah, exactly. You know, are we a matrix

[00:30:03] or, you know, are we, you know, the accidental result of, of physics and chemistry, or are we, you know, the result of some level of, of conscious, if you will, uh, universe, we don't know, we don't know, but you know, yeah, these are questions that we're trying to answer. Uh, you know, where did we come from?

[00:30:23] I, I think that the, the Kepler mission from NASA, which is the space telescope that proved to us. Kind of once and for all that planets are ubiquitous that statistically speaking every star in the sky is not a star But in fact, it's a solar system that statistically every single star in the sky has one or more planets around it I mean to me and and and also because of the Kepler mission We learned that somewhere between 20 and 50 percent depending on the data You look at of these worlds are you know, earth like planets plus minus Earth's eyes and in the right You Um, so called habitable zone or distance from their star, their energy source to support liquid water and therefore potentially life.

[00:31:03] And, you know, having tens of billions of such environments in our own galaxies, like mind blowing. And, you know, in that sense, I think that the Kepler mission was perhaps, you know, the most profound mission in NASA's history so far of any kind, because it fundamentally changed our notion of our place in the cosmos and what the cosmos even is or looks like.

[00:31:26] I think that the way it sort of profoundly as well. Changed the endeavor of SETI and I think made it more compelling than it's ever been, you know, for much of its history SETI as a scientific endeavor has been what one might call a niche science investigating, you know, a profound and interesting, but nevertheless, kind of niche question.

[00:31:49] And, uh, I think in particular with the discovery of the ubiquity of planets, um, and the potential for habitable environments being scattered everywhere, you know, this. Notion of looking for life beyond earth as has kind of gone from Backstreet to Main Street. It's gone from a niche science question to perhaps the most important and significant science question, certainly in astronomy and astrophysics and space exploration, you know, no question.

[00:32:17] And it's now, um, you know, as of 2017 after the Kepler mission, it is one of the Top three science questions of NASA. NASA has three questions in science. It's trying to answer. The first one is how does the universe work? Great question. The second one is how did we get here? Great question. And the third one is, are we alone?

[00:32:39] And you know, those are NASA's questions. Those are the three questions. that drive its science and its research activities. And, uh, you know, they are the relevant questions.

[00:32:49] And since the Kepler mission in watching SETI grow, how has SETI grown in this mission and diversifying the way that it considers this search for extraterrestrial intelligence?

[00:33:00] Well, certainly, uh, you know, over its history, which This year, we actually celebrate our 40th anniversary in November, so we're going to have a big party and John, you should come if you can. And, you know, you mentioned Jill Tartar playing a role in the founding of the Institute. She is the founder of the Institute.

[00:33:15] She's actually co founded the Institute in 1984 with, uh, with Tom Pearson. And, um, she just turned 80 this year and she's still on our Board of Trustees, still on our Science Advisory Board. You know, still such an amazing and inspiring woman and human being. In any case, we've grown from just focusing on SETI, i.

[00:33:36] e. searching for technology as a proxy for life and intelligence using radio telescopes and now optical telescopes, to covering the full spectrum of the natural sciences and the full spectrum of sciences deployed in what we call astrobiology, which is broadly called SETI. a word that means the search or the study of life in the universe.

[00:33:55] You know, this is now a broadly accepted academic term and there are textbooks in astrobiology and, you know, there are degree programs in astrobiology. And, you know, this is an endeavor which now encompasses chemistry, physics, biology, geology, geophysics, climate science, you know, environmental science, astrophysics, cosmology.

[00:34:13] I mean, All the domains of the natural sciences are represented at the SETI Institute. We have over 20 different, you know, distinct scientific backgrounds that come together to do this work. So, it's not only about astronomers, radio and optical looking for science and technology, but it's, it's everything else.

[00:34:29] We, you know, we develop instruments. We have an instrument on the Curiosity called the Chemin system that understands the composition of the regolith on the surface of Mars. We design and build instruments. We do laboratory work in chemistry, physics, biology. We do field expeditions all over the world to, you know, understand life in extreme environments and develop.

[00:34:48] You know, searching techniques and technologies for what we might deploy in places like Mars or in other types of instruments. So it's become over its 40 year history, a very broad spectrum scientific organization. What is interesting about it, what I think is the most exciting and fascinating part of the Institute is we have one science question.

[00:35:10] But to answer that science question, we need all of the sciences, you know, it's, we're not like an institute doing, you know, some sort of biological research where more or less everybody we have is a biochemist or, you know, something like that. I mean, we need everybody. And I often describe the scientists at the Institute as, you know, each of them being responsible for a few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

[00:35:31] And collectively we're trying to put this puzzle together and, you know, develop a picture for life in the universe.

[00:35:37] John: Amazing. It's amazing the amount of different ways you can look at that kind of question and the fact that you house them under one organization, um, I think will really give a lot of benefit to what y'all are doing.

[00:35:50] You know, I went to a art exhibit opening, um, I guess maybe two years or so ago at Northwestern University and it was with the artist Dario Robledo. Um, and I don't know how familiar you are with art and all of that world, but he really, uh, has had a strong scientific background and he did a artist at large residency program, I believe is what it was called, where he worked with, I think it was a cardiologist that he ended up really partnering with, but they really looked at the intersections of his work as an artist.

[00:36:18] And then the, the world of science. And do you see that coming into SETI? As well, where there's, you know, we talked earlier about this conversation around intersecting different disciplines, and I know that said he does a lot of content and discussions and advocacy around work. But I'm curious if we can dive deeper into like what y'all are thinking with that.

[00:36:38] Bill: Well, um, you know, this is going to come across like a question I teed you up to ask. Which it isn't. We can assure your audience that that's the case. The Institute, actually, we have an artist in residence program at the Institute, so we have a woman who is an artist and lover of science, uh, named Bettina Fourchet, and she's the director of our air program, and we bring in artists from all over the world in various different disciplines, musical composition, dance, the visual arts.

[00:37:10] You know, painting, drawing, uh, sculpture, et cetera. And they work with our, uh, scientists in a, in a manner similar to what you described with the cardiologists. So an artist will choose a scientist who is open, you know, to this, uh, to work with and vice versa. And over a two year period, that artist will, will then try to develop some project that is.

[00:37:34] built on, you know, interpreting and, and representing the science that they've been observing and watching and through their artistic lens. And, you know, from our point of view, I think we're all fascinated by the intersection of art and science and, and, you know, art has a way of expressing, you know, human experience in a different way than science does, but it, it can resonate with.

[00:37:56] Some people that, you know, where science doesn't resonate and so forth. So I, I think it opens up a broader like audience and a broader opportunity for public engagement by having artists working at the Institute. But we've had some extraordinary programs, wonderful artists. And, you know, things that have included, you know, international projects, one called Earthling, which was the collection of voices doing 32nd a cappella pieces of music from all over the world, uploading them to smartphone apps and a composer in Mexico.

[00:38:30] Uh, who's very adept at, you know, electronic music and electronic composition. Then taking all these sounds and developing musical compositions categorized into human emotions like, like joy and melancholy and, you know, and death and, and so on. And, you know, the outcome was absolutely extraordinary. And then the outcome of that project, project was also digitally nano printed onto a like nickel size.

[00:38:56] A piece of nickel, I think, in fact, um, and it was on the odysseus lander that landed and then fell over sideways on the moon recently. So it was a project that collected the voices of humanity from all over the world and different languages, cultures and backgrounds with no instrument backup and and then develop compositions.

[00:39:17] And then we projected them to, you know, another physical world, i. e. our moon. So, you know, projects like that, I mean, there's been some absolutely wonderful. Uh, work that's been done in that program. So I, I think there's definitely interest in our part and benefit for exploring this intersection of art and science for appreciating the way that art can express sometimes, you know, deeply complex, um, concepts and undertakings.

[00:39:46] John: Yeah, there, uh, in that exhibition, I saw that in the golden record that was sent off Carl Sagan's collaborator, who they had fallen deeply in love with one another. The collaborator, I'm trying to remember her name, um, and they wrote a number of books because I think they actually wrote contact together too.

[00:40:01] Bill: Oh, Ann Druyan. Yeah. So she's, and she's still active and around. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

[00:40:06] John: So there's this moment where, uh, she started thinking about what does it mean to be deeply human or what does it mean to be a human? And, and she had this idea to record her own heartbeat. Thinking about and then put that onto the record.

[00:40:19] It's that's one of the things on that record. It's my one of my favorite like bits of information that that went on that record.

[00:40:25] Bill: I'll tell you what's not on that record. The Beatles. And the reason for that is their lawyers were worried about copyright. You know, and both Frank and Carl Sagan, you know, said to the lawyers like guys, this is like going into space.

[00:40:41] Are you seriously worried? You know, about a copyright and they were like, no, no, no, no. And so the Beatles honestly are not on their golden record, which is just beyond belief. You know, we have Mozart, we have the Rolling Stones and everything in between, but there's no Beatles. I was told that story by Frank himself when, and I loved it.

[00:40:58] I just thought that was really so amusing and also very human.

[00:41:02] John: Yeah, that's a fair point. That's a very human thing. Yeah, as we're starting to kind of get towards the end of our conversation, there's one thing that I was thinking about where there's talking about this intersection of science and spirituality.

[00:41:12] And really, I think what SETI does really great is the unknown part of it, right? You're, you're at the edge of what we're, what we're doing as a, as a, how do you navigate that in your work? How do you deal with that sort of uncertainty and those conversations? With the scientific community and the general public, and this idea that these are the most profound questions, right?

[00:41:36] The three things that NASA was talking about, but really also what y'all are talking about.

[00:41:40] Bill: Yes. Yeah.

[00:41:40] Yeah. We've been talking about those sort of

[00:41:41] things for longer than NASA has. But yes, we have the same questions. So I think, again, the challenge is to think beyond the limits. Of our technology and to think beyond the limits of our imaginations at some level, this idea of how do you search for life as you don't know, and as you may not understand it now from a getting into kind of a little bit of technology, um, and science here, it is.

[00:42:08] Quite interesting that, you know, now in the age of artificial intelligence and machine learning, we can go about the search in a more interesting and I think comprehensive way than we were able to before. So traditional SETI, uh, radio, using radio telescopes is based on a premise. That other technological civilizations have probably discovered the electromagnetic spectrum, figured out how to manipulate it and use things like radio waves to transmit information.

[00:42:35] And, you know, that's a reasonable assumption, but they could be doing something with, you know, radio frequency. Uh, electromagnetic, um, phenomena that we don't know how to look for. And so if, you know, you're, you're looking for a specific phenomena, in our case, a narrow band carrier frequency, that would be very distinctive from the radio background of space.

[00:42:59] And that's all well and good, but that's the only thing you know, we're, we've been looking for now with AI and machine learning, we can go about the search in a much more profoundly expansive way. And specifically, what we can now do is to say, okay, let's teach the, the, the computer systems and the algorithms, what the radio background looks like.

[00:43:21] And then ask it to find anything different, anything anomalous, you know, the needle in the haystack, the weird thing that stands out. And, uh, that's a very different way of going about, you know, the search. Instead of looking for a particular thing, show me anything that is unusual, that is not what we would call sort of or expect to see in a natural environment.

[00:43:42] So that I think opens up vast new possibilities, um, of phenomena. And of course, in doing that, we presumably would discover all kinds of new. Natural phenomena as well. You know, we would say, well, this is a weird thing and it's not very common and it's very different than the background, but it turns out that it has a natural explanation to it.

[00:44:01] Uh, not an engineer day explanation. So anyway, this, this profoundly changes how we go about this task. But one of the things that we're looking to do in an upcoming gathering is bring together theoretical physicists. And SETI practitioners to just have like this brainstorming session, you know, like else might we do to look for evidence of, of life and or technology beyond earth.

[00:44:29] You know, what if life somewhere else has also evolved into something non biological? Like what if, uh, you know, AI, you know, enabled robots that, you know, have developed consciousness and so forth and, and, and are in fact the only, if you will, life form in quotes, you know, on their world. Uh, how might that be different and how might we discover evidence of, of such beings?

[00:44:53] So that will be a really interesting conversation because, you know, people talk about, well, what about neutrinos? Or what about? You know, DNA, um, and, and, you know, what about looking for evidence on our own planet of the detritus of past technological civilizations that might've, you know, traveled here in the interstellar medium and just landed here and they're maybe even microscopic, but if we look hard enough, we could find them.

[00:45:18] So I think what's really interesting now is that the search per se is becoming far more expansive in nature. And we're starting to ask. Bigger, more profound questions about how to do it and what to look for than ever before. And that, uh, of course is, makes it, you know, very exciting time to be doing this kind of work.

[00:45:38] John: It absolutely does. The conversation around, um, AGI and artificial general intelligence and specifically how it intersects with, with your work at SETI is just, to me, it's totally mind blowing that, Oh, we're not just looking for biological life anymore. We're looking for different framings of what even life could possibly,

[00:45:55] Bill: you know, think about how human beings have manifest.

[00:45:58] Our technologies, you know, the most distant things we've sent from our planet have no biology on board, at least not intentionally, you know, it's hardware, it's computers and spectrometers and camera systems and rockets and so forth. So, you know, it's reasonable to expect that other civilizations have done similar, similar things.

[00:46:15] So they're, While, you know, UFOs is perhaps a different category altogether. There are serious endeavors to say, well, you know, if it might be interesting to look for spacecraft that aren't from Earth, you know, in our solar system, you know, given the scale, they'd be really hard to find, but not necessarily impossible.

[00:46:36] And so, you know, there are serious questions being asked like. Should we, should we be looking for these kinds of things? I mean, the Oumuamua interstellar asteroid, we mostly believe it was, you know, had some scientists, including the head of astronomy at Harvard, Avi Loeb, you know, making claims that this was a spaceship.

[00:46:53] So you know, I think his claims were maybe not. Completely well founded but but they were certainly provocative and certainly got people thinking and um, I think, yeah, we should look for hardware and and, you know, other phenomena. We shouldn't limit ourselves to thinking just in terms of of biology as as we conceive it.

[00:47:13] John: Yeah, you know, a lot of times there's this deep seated place in a childhood memory or a childhood memory. Yeah. Something that that kind of spurred people to do what they do, you know, and as I think about the infinite search and this idea of searching for meaning. Was there something personal to you that led you to do SETI's work?

[00:47:33] Bill: I would say, you know, the personal thing that led me to it ultimately was probably, you know, what you spoke about, just the childhood fascination. So, I mean, you know, I grew up reading, you know, Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan and watching Cosmos and watching Star Trek and all these things. And I just found them deeply fascinating.

[00:47:53] And the scale of the universe. Which over my lifetime, our understanding of that scale has only gone bigger and bigger. The scale is so incomprehensible. Concepts like the Big Bang and, you know, possible multiverses. I mean, they're so mind blowing that they just, you know, fascinated me from, you know, the youngest possible age.

[00:48:14] Perhaps because they are so unknowable at some level. Let's try to figure out the unknowable, um, maybe was something that always It's interesting to me, but you know, the, the actual journey here, which is now almost 10 years old to the Institute. I spent most of my, I studied physics, uh, as an undergraduate.

[00:48:33] I would love to have, you know, gone on, gotten a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics, but I'm sure I wasn't quite smart enough to do that. So I went down different paths, but I worked in, in photonics and lasers and fiber optics and telecommunications for most of my, My career, but have a dear friend who I worked with in the past to through a circuitous path, ended up on the board of trustees of the city Institute, which I was extraordinarily jealous of.

[00:48:58] And I thought, you know, how did you, how did this happen to you? And in any case, I was at a company that we sold to another company and it was time to do something different. And he reached out to me and said, Hey, while you're figuring out your future, we've got some issues here at the city Institute.

[00:49:15] Could you come in and help us out? And I said, I will be there in five minutes. And I literally was, I probably, you know, went through some red lights and did things I shouldn't have done, but I was like, I'll, I'll be over as fast as I can. And, um, you know, that was in March of 2015. And, and by May that had sort of morphed into, would you actually consider staying here and running the place?

[00:49:38] And, uh, you know, once again, I said, yeah, I mean, You don't even have to pay me. I don't say that now, but I said, I would love to, I would be honored to, you know, it, again, it, it, it, its roots were, were in, I guess, again, ongoing fascination with science and scientific topics and big questions. And, uh, and then to have this opportunity has been absolutely extraordinary.

[00:50:02] I mean, the privilege And the good fortune I have to work with the kind of people I do and, you know, you mentioned love before in this universal concept, you know, what's interesting about the people here is how much they love what they do. There's no stock options at the SETI Institute, right? There's no bonuses.

[00:50:18] Nobody's doing this and getting rich myself included. I have I have a. A non joke joke, which is I have the coolest and least lucrative CEO position in Silicon Valley. I think that's like a fair statement, but, but, um, you know, they, they pursue this work because of their passion and their curiosity. And.

[00:50:39] Their interest in, in finding the answers and they love this work to find people so passionate and connected to and committed to their work, you know, is hard. And it's a privilege for me every day to have the opportunity to interact with these people. And quite honestly, it's like going back to school. I literally learned something new every single day.

[00:50:58] There's no question. There's no day that goes by when that doesn't happen. So that's like, you know, kid in a candy store. It's, it's, uh, it's really such a privilege.

[00:51:06] John: And Bill, it's been a privilege talking to you today. This has been something I've been really excited about since we realized I was going to get the opportunity to talk to you.

[00:51:14] But also since 1997, when I watched the movie contact and fascinated with the work that study has been doing and seeing it grow and seeing it turn into what it is today, which is this interdisciplinary, there's tons of scientists that work at the organization. I don't know the exact number, but I want to say hundreds.

[00:51:32] Because there's just so many.

[00:51:33] Bill: Oh, we have, but we have, um, you know, over a hundred scientists and, and affiliate researchers at the institute. But, you know, to your point, it really is becoming a global endeavor. Now, I was recently in, in Switzerland and I was visiting different institutions. I went to ETH or aha, as they say, in Switzerland at the, at at Zurich, which is a, you know, their tech.

[00:51:53] Technical University, where they have the Center for the Origins and Prevalence of Life. I went to the University of Geneva, where they have the Center for the Study of Life in the Universe. I went to the University of Bern, where they have the Center for Base Inhabitability. And I will tell you that none of those entities existed five years ago, not one of them.

[00:52:12] And, uh, so, you know, this is, there's definitely, you know, momentum. Globally and and more people and institutions, academic and otherwise kind of drinking the Kool Aid that we had here at the Institute for the last 40 years and and getting on this bandwagon and saying, you know, this is, yeah, truly one of the most profound scientific pursuits and human questions of all.

[00:52:39] And, you know, let's let's go. Let's go after it.

[00:52:43] John: I can't wait till that day happens and. Bill, you're definitely going to hear from me the day it does.

[00:52:48] Bill: For sure.

[00:52:49] John: One of the biggest moments of my life, at least, um, so

[00:52:52] Bill: I'll be really disappointed if we don't. And in fact, if I don't, I'll probably call you and say, John, did you not get the news?

[00:52:59] John: I will have been under a rock, but definitely not

[00:53:02] Bill: something like that,

[00:53:03] John: but yeah, definitely. Thank you, Bill. I appreciate your time. And I definitely look forward to continuing the conversation.

[00:53:09] Bill: Likewise, thank you, John. It was a privilege.

Johnathan Hatherly
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