>> And so one of the things I think is important to,
for us all to keep in mind, when we think about life, is time scale.
>> Yes, right.
>> So that The earth is 4 and half
billion years old, our universe about 13.7 billion years old.
So, any place where life has evolved, life
has probably started either a billion years before
Earth, it did on Earth, or a billion
years later, and any place where life, technologically advance
life exists, technologically advanced life will either be perhaps
100 million years more advanced than we are.
Well, we've only been technologically advanced for about 10,000 years, since we
started as agriculture, so I've always found this notion that we
should be thinking about not what life would, is like now,
but what life would be like when it became more advanced and
underwent this period of growth and try
to make the best use of energy out there.
>> Yes and, of course, the fact, the
sad truth is that, the universe appears to be totally dead.
That we've looked pretty hard and we haven't found anything.
And that's sort of sad, because it implies that maybe we are the first.
On the other hand, that's also something to be happy about.
If we are the first, then we have the whole universe
for ourselves, which is, in a way, also a happy prospect.
>> Yeah, I know that we've been
looking for life, certainly listening for radio communication.
But I've wondered whether we've been looking
too much for things like ourselves, or,
with radio communication, some ways like what we were in the 1950s and 60s.
>> Absolutely.
No, of course we've been very, very narrow minded in
our searches so far.
We've looked in the very narrow waveband that, for creatures very
much like ourselves, and because it's obvious that
what we will, what we will find when we do find
it, will probably be a total surprise, something which we'd never imagined.
It's always true in astronomy, is that
nature's imagination is much richer than ours.
And so I look
forward to discovering life on some weird place that nobody's ever expected.
>> And I think about the way we communicate and now most of our
information is not sent by radio waves by sent by, you know, optically over fibers.
Right.
>> And it's sent in an encoded way
right when we compress information to send it.
It looks statistically like noise. >> Right.
>> So even if someone were able to see
the optical signals we send they're the signals that
most people are picking up when they're watching this recording.
It's been encoded in such a way that statically it looks like noise.
>> Absolutely.
No, I think it's the celestial life isn't something separate.
Celestial life is just one part of exploring the universe.
And you should always explore.
So that even if you don't find life,
still you make discoveries and.
So that's happily what most people are doing.