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ASTROBIOLOGY AND THE SEARCH 

FOR LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

MAY 21, 2014 

Serial No. 113–76 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY WEBER, Texas 

CHRIS COLLINS, New York 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

DAN MAFFEI, New York 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

SCOTT PETERS, California 

DEREK KILMER, Washington 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC VEASEY, Texas 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

MARK TAKANO, California 

ROBIN KELLY, Illinois 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

May 21, 2014 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee on 

Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ..................... 5 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 6 

Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives .... 7 

Witnesses: 

Dr. Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 8 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 10 

Mr. Dan Werthimer, Director of the SETI Research Center at the University 

of California, Berkeley 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 17 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 20 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 58 

Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions 

Dr. Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute ............................... 74 

Mr. Dan Werthimer, Director of the SETI Research Center at the University 

of California, Berkeley ......................................................................................... 85 

(1) 

ASTROBIOLOGY AND THE SEARCH 

FOR LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 2014 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith 

[Chairman of the Committee] presiding. 
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Chairman SMITH. The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology will come to order. 

And welcome to today’s hearing ‘‘Astrobiology and the Search for 

Life in the Universe.’’ A couple of preliminary announcements. One 

is that I want to thank C–SPAN for covering this hearing today. 

That shows the importance of the hearing in a lot of respects. 

And I want to thank all the students from Herndon High School 

here as well. I understand you had a choice of hearings to attend, 

in fact you could attend almost any hearing you wanted to, and you 

chose this one because you thought it was the most interesting. 

And actually that is one of the purposes of today’s hearing, and 

that is to inspire students today to be the scientists of tomorrow. 

And who knows? We may have some of those scientists in the audience right now who will be inspired by what they hear to study 

astrobiology or perhaps some of the other sciences as well. So we 

appreciate your attendance. 

I will recognize myself for an opening statement and then the 

Ranking Member as well. 

As we discover more planets around the stars in our own galaxy, 

it is natural to wonder if we may finally be on the brink of answering the question, ‘‘Are we alone in the universe?’’ 

Finding other sentient life in the universe would be the most significant discovery in human history. Scientists estimate that there 

are 80 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. To date, more than 

1,700 nearby planets have been found by the Kepler Space Telescope. 

Last month, astronomers discovered the first Earth-like planet 

orbiting its star at a distance where liquid water could be present, 

a condition thought essential to life. Called Kepler-186f, it is only 

ten percent larger than the Earth and about 490 light years away. 

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which will launch in 

2017, and the James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018, 

will help scientists discover more planets with potential biosignatures. 

The United States has pioneered the field of astrobiology and 

continues to lead the world in this type of research. A sample of 

professional papers published in Science magazine between 1995 

and 2013 illustrates the significant growth and growing popularity 

of the field of astrobiology. Between 1995 and 2012, the number of 

papers published on astrobiology increased 10 times and the number of scientific reports that cited astrobiology increased 25 times. 

Astrobiology is a serious subject studied by serious scientists 

around the world. Reflecting this interest, next September the Library of Congress and NASA will hold a 2-day astrobiology symposium on what the societal impacts could be of finding microbial, 

complex, or intelligent life in the universe. 

Whether life exists on other planets in the universe continues to 

be a matter of debate among scientists. Around the world a number 

of astronomers listen to naturally occurring radio frequencies. They 

try to filter out the cosmic noise and interference of human-made 

satellites and spacecraft to find anomalies that could be signals 

from civilizations elsewhere in the universe. 

The Allen Telescope Array at the SETI Institute, financed by 

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and the Arecibo telescope in Puer-
6 

to Rico are two well-known locations for conducting radio astronomy searches for life in the universe. 

Recently, radio astronomers have detected pulsed signals that 

last only a few milliseconds. These ‘‘fast radio bursts’’ as they are 

called have caused scientists to speculate as to their cause. Some 

scientists hypothesize they could be from stars colliding or from an 

extraterrestrial intelligent source. 

Other astronomers search for laser light pulses, instead of radio 

waves. Researchers at the SETI Optical Telescope, run by the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Columbus Optical 

SETI Observatory and the University of California at Berkeley, 

among others, use optical telescopes to try to detect nanosecond 

pulses or flashes of light distinct from pulsars or other naturally 

occurring phenomena. 

I hope today’s hearing will enable us to learn more about how 

research in astrobiology continues to expand this fascinating frontier. The unknown and unexplored areas of space spark human curiosity. Americans and others around the world look up at the stars 

and wonder if we are alone or is there life on other planets. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LAMAR S. SMITH

As we discover more planets around the stars in our own galaxy, it is natural to 

wonder if we may finally be on the brink of answering the centuries’ old question, 

‘‘Are we alone in the universe?’’ 

Finding other sentient life in the universe would be the most significant discovery 

in human history. Scientists estimate that there are 800 billion stars in the Milky 

Way. To date, more than 1,700 nearby planets have been found by the Kepler Space 

Telescope. 

Last month, astronomers discovered the first Earth-like planet orbiting its star 

at a distance where liquid water could be present, a condition thought essential to 

life. Called Kepler 186f, it is only 10% larger than Earth and is 490 light years 

away. 

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which will launch in 2017, and the 

James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018, will help scientists discover more 

planets with potential biosignatures. 

The United States has pioneered the field of astrobiology and continues to lead 

the world in this type of research. A sample of professional papers published in 

Science magazine between 1995 and 2013 illustrates the significant growth and 

growing popularity of the field of astrobiology. Between 1995 and 2012, the number 

of papers published on astrobiology increased ten times and the number of scientific 

reports that cited astrobiology increased 25 times. 

Astrobiology is a serious subject studied by serious scientists around the world. 

Reflecting this interest, next September the Library of Congress and NASA will hold 

a two day astrobiology symposium on what the societal impacts could be of finding 

microbial, complex or intelligent life in the universe. 

Whether life exists on other planets in the universe continues to be a matter of 

debate among scientists. Around the world a number of astronomers listen to naturally occurring radio frequencies. They try to filter out the cosmic noise and interference of human-made satellites and spacecraft to find anomalies that could be signals from civilizations elsewhere in the universe. 

The Allen Telescope Array at the SETI Institute, financed by Microsoft co-founder 

Paul Allen, and the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico are two well-known locations 

for conducting radio astronomy searches for life in the universe. 

Recently radio astronomers have detected pulsed signals that last only a few milliseconds. These ‘‘Fast Radio Bursts’’ have caused scientists to speculate as to their 

cause. Some scientists hypothesize they could be from stars colliding or from an extraterrestrial intelligent source. Other astronomers search for laser light pulses, instead of radio waves. Researchers at the SETI Optical Telescope, run by the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Columbus Optical SETI Observatory 

and the University of California at Berkeley, among others, use optical telescopes 
7 

to try to detect nanosecond pulses or flashes of light distinct from pulsars or other 

naturally occurring phenomena. 

I hope today’s hearing will enable us to learn more about how research in 

astrobiology continues to expand this fascinating frontier. The unknown and unexplored areas of space spark human curiosity. Americans and others around the 

world look up at the stars and wonder if we are alone or is there life on other planets. 

Chairman SMITH. That concludes my opening statement, and the 

Ranking Member, the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Johnson, is 

recognized for hers. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good 

morning. In the interest of saving time I will forgo making an 

opening statement and instead I will simply want to welcome Dr. 

Shostak and Dr. Werthimer to this morning’s hearing on the search 

for life, including intelligent life, in outer space. You both are distinguished researchers and I know that you will have thoughtful 

testimony to present, and this afternoon will determine whether we 

will have researchers to continue this. 

So thank you and I yield back. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. 

And I would like to introduce our witnesses at this point. 

Our first witness, Dr. Seth Shostak, is a Senior Astronomer at 

the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. He has held this 

position since 2001. Dr. Shostak has spent much of his career conducting radio astronomy research on galaxies. Dr. Shostak has 

written more than 400 published magazine and web articles on 

various topics in astronomy, technology, film, and television. He 

has also edited and contributed to nearly a dozen scientific and 

popular astronomy books. He has authored four books, including 

‘‘Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life’’ and 

‘‘Confessions of an Alien Hunter: a Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.’’ You can hear him each week as host of a 

one-hour-long radio program on astrobiology entitled ‘‘Big Picture 

Science.’’ 

Dr. Shostak received his bachelor’s in physics from Princeton and 

his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology. 

Our second witness, Dr. Dan Werthimer, has worked at the 

Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley since 1983. He is currently the Director of several of the lab’s centers, including the 

SETI Research Center and the Center for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research. 

Additionally, Mr. Werthimer serves as Chief Scientist for the 

lab’s SETI@home program and Associate Director of their Berkeley 

Wireless Research Center. Mr. Werthimer co-authored ‘‘SETI 2020’’ 

and was the editor of ‘‘Bioastronomy: Molecules, Microbes, and Extraterrestrial Life’’ and ‘‘Astronomical and Biochemical Origins and 

the Search for Life in the Universe.’’ 

His research has been featured in many broadcast news stories 

such as on ABC and CBS and many major newspapers and magazines. His work also has reached a younger audience through Scholastic Weekly, a science magazine for kids. 

Mr. Werthimer received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 

physics and astronomy from San Francisco State University. 
8 

I will recognize to start us off today Dr. Shostak and then we will 

go to Mr. Werthimer. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. SETH SHOSTAK, 

SENIOR ASTRONOMER AT THE SETI INSTITUTE 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Thank you, Congressman Smith, for the opportunity to be here. 

I am just going to give you a few big-picture thoughts on the 

search for life and in particular intelligent life, the kind of life that 

could uphold its side of the conversation as opposed to the microbial sort of life. This is obviously a subject of great interest to many 

people. 

Let me just back up and say that when you read in the paper 

about the discovery of a new planet or something, water on Mars, 

you are looking at one of three horses in a race to be the first to 

find some extraterrestrial biology. The first horse is simply to find 

it nearby, and that is where the big money is. Rovers on Mars, the 

moons of the outer solar system. There are at least a half a dozen 

other worlds that might have life in our solar system. The chances 

of finding it I think are good, and if that happens, it will happen 

in the next 20 years, depending on the financing. 

The second horse in that race is to build very large instruments 

that can sniff, if you will, the atmospheres of planets around other 

stars and maybe find oxygen in the atmosphere or methane, which, 

as you know, is produced by cows and pigs and things like that, 

but biology in any case. And—so you could find pigs in space, I suppose. That is again a project depending on funding that could yield 

results in the next two decades. 

The third horse in that race is SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial 

Intelligence, and that idea, if you have seen the movie Contact you 

know what the idea is, is to eavesdrop on signals that are either 

deliberately or accidentally leaked off somebody else’s world. That 

makes sense because in fact even we, only 100 years after Tesla 

and Marconi and the invention of practical radio, we already have 

the technology that would allow us to send bits of information 

across light years of distance to putative extraterrestrials. 

Let me just tell you why I think they are out there, by the way. 

That—you know, it is unproven whether there is any life beyond 

Earth. That is the situation today. You have heard me say twice 

now that I think the situation is going to change within everyone’s 

lifetime in this room. Okay. And the reason is we are—the universe 

is a fecund place for life. Congressman Smith has mentioned the 

number of stars in our galaxy. With respect, that number is actually rather larger. It is something like 200 to 400 billion stars, but 

we now know that at least 70 percent of them have planets. Recent 

results from NASA’s Kepler telescope, an astoundingly successful 

instrument, suggest that one in five stars may have planets that 

are cousins of the Earth. What that means is that in our own galaxy there are tens of billions of other planets that are the kind you 

might want to build condos on and live. Okay. Tens of billions. And 

if that isn’t adequate for your requirements, let me point out there 

are 150 billion other galaxies we can see with our telescopes, each 

with a similar complement of Earthlike worlds. 
9 

What that means is that the numbers are so astounding that if 

this is the only planet on which not only life but intelligent life has 

arisen, then we are extraordinarily exceptional. It is like buying 

trillions of lottery tickets and none of them is a winner. That would 

be very, very unusual. And although everybody likes to think that 

they are special, and I am sure you all are, maybe we are not that 

special. Certainly the history of astronomy shows that every time 

we thought we were special, we were wrong. 

So what has been done so far, we have had various kinds of radio 

searches. I won’t detail the technology. We have looked at much of 

the sky at fairly low sensitivity over a limited range of radio wavelengths, radio sections of the band. We have looked in particular 

directions at a few thousand star systems. In other words, we have 

just begun the search. The fact that we haven’t found anything 

means nothing. It is like looking for megafauna in Africa and giving up after you have only examined one city block. And the reason 

the search has been so cramped and constricted so far is simply, 

to be honest, the fact that there is no funding for this. It is all privately funded. The total number of people in the world that do 

SETI for a living is fewer than the number of people in any row 

in the audience here behind me. That is the world total for this endeavor. 

When are we going to find them? You have already heard me 

suggest that that may happen rather quickly. Let me just point out 

two other things. One, this is very interesting to the public because 

they have seen extraterrestrials on television and in the movies all 

their lives, okay. That also gives it a certain giggle factor. It is very 

easy to make fun of this. On the other hand, it would have been 

easy to make fun of Ferdinand Magellan’s idea to sail around the 

Earth or Captain Cook to map the South Pacific. It is exploration. 

That is what this is. 

The consequences are always, shall we say, salubrious. To find 

that there is life out there, intelligent life, would calibrate our position in the universe. It would, as Congressman Smith says, probably be the greatest discovery that humankind could ever make, 

and what is important is this is the first generation that has both 

the knowledge and the technology to do that. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Shostak follows:] 
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Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Dr. Shostak. 

And, Mr. Werthimer. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. DAN WERTHIMER, 

DIRECTOR OF THE SETI RESEARCH CENTER 

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Thanks for the opportunity—thank you for the 

opportunity to talk to you about this question, are we alone? Is 

anybody out there? 

Can you guys show the slides? I want to walk you through some 

of the SETI experiments that we and other people are doing. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. So, as Seth mentioned, this NASA Kepler mission, from that we have learned that there are a trillion planets in 

our Milky Way galaxy. That is more planets than there are stars, 

lots of places for life. And we have learned that a lot of these planets are what we call Goldilocks planets, at the right distance where 

it is not too hot, not too cold, rocky planets, some have liquid 

water. So there could be a lot of life out there. 

So how are we getting in touch? Well, one of the ideas is that 

earthlings have been sending off radio, television, radar signals out 

into space for the last 75 years. The early television shows like I 

Love Lucy, Ed Sullivan have gone past 10,000 stars. The nearby 

stars have seen the Simpsons. So you could turn that around. If we 

are broadcasting, maybe other civilizations are sending signals in 

our direction either leaking signals the way that we unintentionally send off signals or maybe a deliberate signal. 

They could be sending laser signals, and there are a number of 

projects looking for laser signals. This is a project that Harvard 

University, a very clever project, this is a project at Lick Observatory. There is also a project at the—in Hawaii at the Keck Telescope looking for laser signals. 

People are also looking for radio signals. Our group uses the 

world’s largest radio antenna. We call it a radio telescope. This is 

the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. It is 1,000 feet in diameter. 

It holds 10 billion bowls of cornflakes. We haven’t actually tried 

that. It is operated by the National Science Foundation, and most 

astronomers would be lucky to use this telescope a day or two a 

year. We figured out a way to use the telescope at the same time 

that other scientists are using it so we can actually collect data all 

year round, all day. We are collecting data right now as we talk 

to you. 

Now, that is actually a problem. So even though we have got the 

world’s largest telescope all year round, it creates an enormous 

amount of data. And to analyze the data we asked volunteers for 

help. They—if you—you can help us by running a program on your 

home computer or your laptop or your desktop computer. You install a program called SETI@home. It is a screensaver program, 

and the way—we take the data from the world’s largest telescope 

and we break it up into little pieces. Everybody gets a different 

piece of the sky to analyze. Then you install this program and it 

pops up when you go out for a cup of coffee and the computer goes 

through the data looking through all the different frequencies and 

signal types. This is what it looks like when it is running on your 

computer at home. 
18 

It takes a few days to analyze that data looking for interesting 

signals. And then when it finds interesting signals, it sends them 

back to Berkeley and then you get a new chunk of data, different 

part of the sky to work on. 

If you are the lucky one that finds that faint murmur from a distant civilization, you might get the Nobel Prize, but there is a 

catch. The Nobel Prize—you have to maybe share with a lot of people. There are millions of people that have downloaded the 

SETI@home screensaver. They are split out into 200 countries. It 

is—together, the volunteers have formed one of the most powerful 

supercomputers on the planet and they have enabled the most sensitive search for extraterrestrial signals that anybody has ever 

done. So we are very grateful to the volunteers. 

And now we have made that more general so that you can participate in not just SETI with your home computer but you can 

participate in lots of projects. There is climate prediction projects, 

there is a gravity wave project, there is protein folding. You can 

look for malaria drugs, HIV drugs, cancer drugs and you can allocate how you want your spare computing cycles to be used on your 

home computer. 

One of the new projects we are working on is called Panchromatic SETI, and we are asking universities and observatories 

around the world to look at a lot of different wavelength bands, a 

lot of different frequencies. We are targeting the very nearest stars 

and we are trying to cover all the different bands that come 

through the Earth’s atmosphere. We are looking at radio frequencies, we are looking at infrared frequencies or wavelengths, 

and we are looking at also optical frequencies looking for laser signals. And this will be an extremely comprehensive search because 

we have got eight different telescopes that we are using and looking at all these different bands but only targeting the nearby stars. 

Another project that we are just launching this year is called 

Interplanetary Eavesdropping, and the idea of this project is that 

there may be signals going back and forth between two planets in 

a distant solar system. For instance, maybe eventually we will 

have machines or people on Mars and we will have radio communication or laser communication between our two planets. Well, put 

it the other way. A distant civilization may have colonized a planet 

in their own solar system and there may be radio or laser signals 

going back and forth between those two planets. And now with the 

Kepler spacecraft we know exactly when two planets in a distant 

solar system are lined up with Earth so we can schedule our observations and target that and see if we can intercept those signals 

going back and forth between two distant planets. We are using 

that—the Green Bank telescope in West Virginia to do that experiment. 

While we haven’t found ETs so far but we have made a lot of interesting discoveries. We have discovered a planet made out of 

solid diamond. We have made the first maps of the black hole of 

the center of the galaxy. These instruments are used in all kinds 

of things, in brain research which may eventually control prosthetic arms, but we haven’t found ET so far. We are still working 

on it. We are just getting in the game. We have only had radio 100 
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years. We are just learning how to do it. It is like looking for a needle in a haystack but I am optimistic in the long run. 

The reason I am optimistic in the long run is that the SETI is 

limited by computing technology, which is growing exponentially. It 

is limited by telescope technology. China is building a huge telescope, bigger than Arecibo. The Australians and South Africans 

and the Europeans are working on a huge telescope made out of 

thousands of dishes combined to make a giant telescope. 

And I think I will stop there. I have got a couple of poems that 

I could read you from the volunteers but I am out of time. Thank 

you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Werthimer follows:] 
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Chairman SMITH. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Werthimer. 

Thank you both for your excellent testimony, and actually you 

have anticipated my questions a little bit but I would still like to 

go forward with them. 

And let me address the first question to both of you all but starting with Dr. Shostak. And it is this, kind of a two-part question. 

What do you think—and I can anticipate your answer a little bit 

on the basis of your statement—but what do you think is the possibility of microbial life being found in the universe or intelligent life 

being found in the universe? So the first question goes to the possibility. The second question would be what you think is the likelihood of finding either microbial life or intelligent life in the universe, two different kind of questions, Dr. Shostak. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Well, the probability of life of course is hard to estimate because what we do know now and something we didn’t know 

until very recently, even 10, 20 years ago, is that there are habitats 

that could support life. What astronomy has proven in the last 500 

years is that the entire universe is made out of the same stuff, 

right. The most distant galaxies have the same 92 elements that 

were on the wall in your 9th grade classroom. So this means that 

if you have taken chemistry in school you don’t have to take it 

again if you move to another galaxy. It is all the same everywhere. 

We know that the building blocks are there. We now know that 

there are going to be plenty of planets where you have liquid water 

and an atmosphere, the kind of salubrious conditions that you have 

in Hyattsville, for example, so that life could arise on any of these 

places. 

We also know that life began on Earth very, very quickly. Now 

this is only a sample of one, so it is not entirely convincing, but 

it does suggest that it wasn’t very difficult for life to get a foothold 

on this planet, and maybe elsewhere. So life I think is perhaps not 

so hard to get started. That is sort of the general impression among 

scientists. But what they believe is not so important; it is finding 

it that is important. 

The second part of your question, what about intelligent life, that 

is a lot harder. The Earth has had life we know for at least 3.5 billion, probably 4 billion years, almost since the beginning. This 

place has been carpeted with life and almost all of that time it required a microscope to see it. It was all microbial. Only in the last 

500 million years did we get multicellular life, eventually trilobites, 

dinos, you know the whole story, okay. 

That opens up the question, well, you know, if I give you a million worlds with life, what fraction of them is ever going to cook 

up something as clever as you all? And the answer to that is we 

don’t know the answer to that. However, there are indirect suggestions that it will happen given enough time simply because we are 

not the only species that has gotten clever in the past 50 million 

years. If you have dogs and cats at home, they are cleverer than 

the dinosaurs. Intelligence does pay off. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Dr. Shostak. 

By the way, you have made a point that I might emphasize and 

that is that 20 years ago we hadn’t detected a single planet outside 

our solar system. Now, we are up to close to 2000 so it is almost 

exponential growth in astrobiology research. 
58 

Mr. Werthimer. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. I suspect the universe is teaming with microbial life. It would be bizarre if we are alone but I don’t know that 

for sure. The intelligence is going to be rarer, but because there are 

trillion planets, I believe it is going to happen often. It has happened several times on this planet and it is likely to arise elsewhere. 

Chairman SMITH. And as you would put it, at 100 percent then? 

Mr. WERTHIMER. 99. 

Chairman SMITH. Yeah, 99.9999 and strung on out. Okay. Good. 

The next question, Mr. Werthimer, let me follow up with you. 

And by the way, as far as the SETI@home screensaver goes, that 

would be something for the students here to take advantage of as 

well as Members. I tried to adapt that to my laptop in my office 

several years ago and was not able to, so maybe we will talk some 

more. Maybe the government needs to change its policy; I am not 

sure which. 

But let me ask you what are the advantages and disadvantages 

of radio SETI versus optical SETI? 

Mr. WERTHIMER. There are lots of pros and cons. Lasers are good 

for point-to-point communication and lots of bits per second, lots of 

data. I think the best strategy is a multiple strategy. We should 

be looking for all kinds of different signals and not put all our 

money in one basket. 

It is hard to predict what other civilizations are doing. If you had 

asked me a 100 years ago what to look for I would have said smoke 

signals, so we tried to launch a new SETI project, a new idea every 

year. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. And, Dr. Shostak, anything to add to the 

advantages or disadvantages of radio versus optical SETI? 

Dr. SHOSTAK. I should point out that they are both sort of different colors of the same thing, in fact literally different colors because they are both electromagnetic means of communication and 

we use both in our telecommunications here on Earth and I suspect 

the aliens will as well. 

I have to say that just about every week I get an email from 

somebody who says you guys are looking for radio signals? That is 

so old school. The extraterrestrials, assuming they are out there, 

will use something much more sophisticated than that and I am 

not sure what that is. That depend on physics we don’t know. And 

one shouldn’t discount a technology simply because it has been 

around a while. We use the wheel every day. That is a pretty old 

technology. I suspect we will continue to use the wheel for a long 

time. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. And thank you both for your answers to 

my questions. 

And the Ranking Member Ms. Johnson is recognized for her 

questions. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. I am trying very hard to 

ask something that sounds sensible. 

What is the status of the extraterrestrial intelligence research 

now? 

Mr. WERTHIMER. So I think we are just getting in the game; we 

are learning how to do this and I think we would be lucky to find— 
59 

even though I am optimistic about life and intelligent life in the 

universe and it is likely there is a whole galactic internet out there, 

I think we would be lucky to find them now but I am optimistic 

in the long run. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Congressman Johnson, I might point out that contrary to popular impression, this experiment isn’t the same from 

day-to-day. People figure we are sitting around with earphones listening in to cosmic static every day, a rather tedious job if that is 

what it were. But it is not. All the listening is done by computers. 

But the really important point is that much of this experiment 

depends on digital technology, computers if you will. And as you 

know, there is something called Moore’s law which says that whatever you can buy today for a dollar you can buy twice as much for 

a dollar two years from now. There is this very rapid growth in the 

capabilities there. 

So in fact this search is speeding up and it is actually speeding 

up exponentially, a very heavily overused word exponentially, but 

in fact it applies. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Tell me this. I know that the improvement of technologies are important and yet some of the old technologies or old 

techniques are also still in play. How do you predict your advancement based on what you have available to you for research tools? 

Dr. SHOSTAK. I will just say something. I am sure Dan has much 

to add to this. But in terms of that we can do in the near future, 

the foreseeable future, what you really I think need to do if you 

want to have a decent chance of success—and mind you, this has 

to remain speculative; I mean this is all like asking Chris Columbus two weeks out of Cadiz, you know, hey, have you found any 

new continents lately? And his answer would be, well, there was 

only water around the ship today, and by the way also yesterday 

water around the ship and tomorrow it is going to be fairly aqueous 

in the vicinity of the ship, okay. So he can’t predict when anything 

interesting is going to happen, nor can we. 

But if you look at what are called euphemistically estimates— 

and they are guesses—as to what fraction of stars out there that 

house somebody that you might be able to pick up, it sounds like 

you have to look at a few million star systems to have a reasonable 

chance of success. We can’t do that today. We have not that today. 

We have done less than one percent of that as of today, okay. But 

given the predictable advancements in technology, to look at a few 

million star systems is something that can be done within two 

dozen years given, you know, the funding to do it. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Seth captured it well. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Now, when we find the other life on other planets, 

what do you speculate we would find and what is of value or potential value? 

Mr. WERTHIMER. I think it is profound either way. This is not an 

expensive thing, of order $1 million a year we are founded by National Science Foundation, NASA, Templeton Foundation, some private donations. 

The reason I think it is profound either way if we discover that 

we are alone, we had better take really good care of life on this 

planet. It is very precious. 
60 

And the other thing that is profound, too, if we are—find that we 

are part of a galactic community and get on the galactic internet 

and learn all their poetry, music, literature, science, we could learn 

a lot. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. I would just add briefly nobody knows what we will 

learn. If we can decode this signal, this is sort of like being confronted with hieroglyphics. You know, you might be able to figure 

them out. In the case of the hieroglyphics, it wasn’t so hard. It 

turns out the hieroglyphics were written by humans so that made 

it a lot easier. And there was also the Rosetta Stone and whatever. 

So we might not ever figure it out, okay. If you could, you would 

be listening to data being sent by societies that are far in advance 

of us because we are hearing them, not the other way around. So 

they are more advanced and maybe they teach you some very important stuff. Who knows? I mean imagine that the Incas find a 

barrel that is washed up on the shore, you know, maybe from Europe and it is filled with books. If they could ever figure out the 

books, they would learn a lot of interesting stuff. I don’t know that 

we will ever figure out the books, but even if we don’t, the important point has been made, and that is we have calibrated our place 

not in the physical universe, we have sort of done that, but calibrated our place in the biological and even more—the intellectual 

universe. And I think that that is maybe good for our souls to know 

how we fit in. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. My time has expired. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. 

The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Johnson, is recognized for his 

questions. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, for both of you, how has the recent discovery of over 

1,700 planets by the Kepler space telescope—how has that impacted SETI research? 

Mr. WERTHIMER. If you had asked astronomers 20 years ago are 

there planets going around other stars, we would have said, well, 

we think so but we don’t know. And that has all changed now. And 

a lot of it is due to NASA’s Kepler mission. And if you extrapolate 

on the planets, which are a few thousand planets that they have 

discovered, if you extrapolate on that, there are a trillion planets 

in the Milky Way galaxy. That is about three or four times more 

planets that there are stars, so that has got a lot of places for life. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Okay. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. I think that it has also affected the experiments in 

the sense that in the past we would point the telescopes in the direction of stars, certain kinds of stars, certain masses of stars, certain brightnesses of stars. Those stars were the ones that we 

thought might have an Earthlike planet, but we didn’t know. We 

now know two things. One, as Dan has just mentioned, we know 

that the majority of stars have planets. So you can just look at a 

random star and feel fairly confident that it has planets. But more 

than that, we are beginning to get some indication from Kepler 

what fraction of stars have planets that are sort of like the Earth, 

and that fraction is not one in a million, it is not 1 in 1,000, it is 

not 1 in 100. It may be one in five. So you look at, you know, 50 

star systems and you have examined 10 Earthlike planets. So in 
61 

some sense it has made the search much more straightforward. We 

just look at all the nearby stars we can. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Okay. Well, Dr. Shostak, would you please provide 

some examples of the technical contributions that SETI has made 

to astronomy and other fields? For example, how has SETI research benefited other areas of science? 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Well, I think that its benefit is less so in terms of 

the discovery. Obviously we haven’t found ET. If we had, we 

wouldn’t be having this hearing, okay. But—and to my surprise, I 

have to say SETI has not turned up any astrophysical phenomena 

that were unexpected as well, okay. And that is surprising. Normally, the history—the precedent in astronomy is that every time 

you build an instrument that examines a different if you will parameter in the phase space of the universe, you find something 

new. So it is instructive that it has not. 

The kind of technology that has been developed is certainly of interest to other fields in astronomy. But I think the real value of 

SETI is not so much in terms of what it does to astronomy but 

what it does in terms of the other efforts being made to find life 

in space. NASA has a big effort. You know, the rovers on Mars, 

yes, they are there to find the hydrology, the history of water on 

Mars, but why are you interested in the history of water on Mars? 

You are interested because you want to know were there ever Martians, you know, microbial most likely, or are there still Martians? 

That is what interests people the most. 

And SETI was always, if you will, a punch line to this story that 

NASA had about finding, you know, the traces of water on Mars 

or burrowing through the ice on Europa and Enceladus, some of 

these moons of the outer solar system where there may be vast 

quantities of liquid water, that sort of thing. 

SETI was always that, okay, life— we may find life, but what 

about intelligent life? That would be even more interesting. And 

that is what is missing from the NASA program today. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Okay. You made a comment just a few minutes 

ago that kind of caught my attention. Let me make sure I got it 

right. You said that if we hear from intelligent life out there somewhere that they must be more advanced than us because we are 

hearing from them and not the other way around. How can you 

draw that conclusion? I mean maybe they have been hearing from 

us for a long time and just don’t like what we have to say. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Um-hum. I think it is entirely possible that we 

are on their—in their catalog. They have seen oxygen in our atmosphere and they know we are out here. And I think life in the universe is going to be—there is going to be lots of different stages. 

Some of it is going to be microbial, some of it will be trees, more 

sophisticated. The Earth is 5 billion years old, some stars are 10 

billion years old, so there could be a lot of advanced civilizations 

as well. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Um-hum. Okay. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Just to point out that you are not going to hear 

from any less advanced societies. They are not building radio transmitters. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, yeah, I would say—— 

Dr. SHOSTAK. That is for sure. 
62 

Mr. JOHNSON. I would say at least equal to, perhaps more advanced, but, you know, maybe they got their caller ID block turned 

on or something. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. It could be. I wouldn’t speculate on alien sociology 

and whether they would like our television or not so I don’t know 

about that. But the chances that if they are at least at our level 

that they are within 100 or even 1000 or even 10,000 years of our 

level is simply on statistical grounds highly uncertain. If you hear 

from somebody, they are way beyond you. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Yeah. One final quick question for both of you. 

How would you define successful SETI research? I mean I know 

that is kind of a nebulous question but—— 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Finding the signal. 

Mr. JOHNSON. —how would you define it successful? 

Dr. SHOSTAK. If you found a signal that could be corroborated. 

If you just find it once and you can’t find it again, it is not science. 

So if you find a signal that is moving across the sky the way the 

stars do because of the rotation of the Earth, it is a narrow band 

signal, it is not made by nature, it is made by a transmitter, that 

is success. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Right. Okay. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. I think the most likely scenario is finding some 

sort of artifact of their technology, a radar signal or a navigational 

beacon or something. That won’t contain a lot of information but 

we will know we are not alone. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. 

The gentlewoman from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici, is recognized for 

her questions. And if the gentlewoman will just yield to me for 10 

seconds. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Certainly. 

Chairman SMITH. It was mentioned a while ago that the likelihood is if there were other intelligent civilizations, they would likely be far and—more advanced than we are. We are a relatively junior galaxy. They might be two—I don’t know, two billion years 

older than we are and it is just fascinating to think what form of 

life might be existent in a universe or a parallel universe or another galaxy where they have had a two billion year head start. We 

might not even recognize the sentient beings. We might not be able 

to communicate with them, but that is just one of the reasons why 

we are fascinated by the subject. 

And none of this will be counted or charged against the gentlewoman’s five minutes for questions. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you so much, Dr. Shostak and Mr. Werthimer, for being 

here. I noticed in your testimony, Mr. Werthimer, that you said 

that there are 24 SETI scientists on the planet and I can’t think 

of a time in this Committee were we have had a larger percentage 

of experts on our panel. So thank you both so much for being here. 

I really appreciate it. 

And, Dr. Shostak, I really am intrigued by your section in your 

testimony on the public’s interest and how the idea of life in space 

is an idea that everyone grasps and is especially an ideal hook for 
63 

interesting young people in science. I think that is evidenced by the 

full Committee room today. 

One of the statements that resonated with me is ‘‘it would be a 

cramped mind indeed that didn’t wonder who might be out there.’’ 

I really appreciate that. You said also in your testimony 

‘‘extraterrestrials are the unknown tribe over the hill, potential 

competitors or mates, but in any case, someone we would like to 

know more about.’’ And I recollect a similar hearing in this Committee. I believe it was last year when one of my colleagues—and 

I am fairly certain it was Representative Chris Smith, who is no 

longer on the Committee, said the interesting question is what do 

we do when we find the life on another planet? 

So can you talk, both of you, about what is the plan? Do we announce it to the world? Do we do research more to determine if 

these are friendly or collaborative? Or what do we do when we 

make the discovery, assuming that it is going to happen? 

Dr. Shostak, would you like to begin? 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Yes. That is a question of great interest to the public and of great importance as well. To begin with, there is no danger. You tune in your favorite DJ here in D.C. on the car radio and 

there is no danger that that DJ is going to jump into the car next 

to you and give you a hard time because they don’t know that you 

have picked them up. So if we pick up a signal, they don’t know 

that. 

There is the question of, well, should we reply? I will get to that 

in just a second. But what happens then? Suppose we do pick up 

this signal? It would be announced. The public has the idea that 

you all have a secret plan, that the government has a secret plan 

for what to do if we pick up a signal. As far as I can tell, there 

is no plan, okay. And we have had false alarms and I have waited 

for my Congressman to call me up and say, hey, you guys are picking up a signal. What about that? And nobody in the government 

shows the slightest bit of interest to be quite honest. What happens 

is that the media start calling up, the New York Times will call up, 

right, but the media—or, sorry, the government is not so interested. 

So what would happen is that it would immediately be known 

that we had found this signal and it would be known even before 

it had been corroborated. So there are going to be false alarms. Be 

prepared for that. But what you do is you get somebody in another 

observatory to also observe it. You would not believe it yourself if 

you were the only ones to find it. There are too many things that 

could go wrong, okay. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Mr. Werthimer, do you have anything to add to 

that? 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Yeah. I think before you make a big announcement you want to make sure it is real. You ask a different telescope with different people, different software, different equipment 

to see if they can verify it. Then you can triangulate, make sure 

it is coming from something outside. You make sure it is not a 

graduate student playing a prank on you. And once you have some 

confidence that you have found something, you may not know what 

it is. It could be some new astrophysical phenomena. When pulsars 

were discovered, they thought maybe they had found little green 
64 

men. So I think you—then you—at the point where you are pretty 

confident that you have found something, you make all the information public, the coordinates in the sky, the frequency, anything 

you know about the signal, and then I think there will be a lot of 

debate about whether there is some new natural phenomena or 

this is really evidence of another civilization. A lot of people will 

be working on that problem. 

Ms. BONAMICI. And could you also address of the 24—you say the 

24 SETI scientists on the planet, to what extent are other nations 

involved? How collaborative are we? We have a lot of discussions 

in this Committee about international collaboration, especially in 

space. So can you talk about where we are as a nation compared 

with the other countries in the world—— 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Yeah. 

Ms. BONAMICI. —on this issue? 

Mr. WERTHIMER. SETI is quite fragile. As you said, there are 24 

people doing it. There are about two thirds of them in the United 

States. The United States is leading this effort and a lot of the 

original ideas have come out of the United States. But there is— 

we are working with other scientists in other countries, and because it is so fragile, we are trying to train new people and get new 

ideas and get other groups because it is only at a very small number of institutions right now. The funding is fragile, too. It is fluctuating around. 

The two biggest telescopes on the planet are currently funded by 

the National Science Foundation, the Green Bank telescope in 

West Virginia, the Arecibo telescope. Those are in funding jeopardy. It looks like one of those observatories is probably going to 

have to be shut down. The other is just hanging by a thread. The 

Chinese are building a bigger telescope. There is a new one going 

to be built in South Africa and Australia. So the United States may 

not continue to lead this work but it is now. 

Ms. BONAMICI. I would find that disappointing if that happened. 

And then I am out of time. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici. 

And the gentleman from New York, Mr. Collins, is recognized for 

his questions. 

Mr. COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I think I might ask the question everyone in this room wants to 

ask. Have you watched Ancient Aliens and what is your comment 

about that series? 

We will start with you, Dr. Shostak. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Yes, I think I have been on it actually, more than 

once. The public is fascinated with the idea that we may be being 

visited now or may have been visited in the past, the so-called UFO 

phenomenon. I personally don’t share the conviction that we are 

being visited. I don’t think that that would be something that, you 

know, all the governments of the world had managed to obfuscate, 

to keep secret. I don’t think—I don’t believe that. 

But the idea that maybe we were visited during the time of the 

ancient Egyptians and so forth, keep in mind that in the 4.5 billion 

year history of the Earth the time of ancient Egyptians was yesterday, right. So, again, why were they there then? What was it that 
65 

brought them to Earth? I have no idea and I don’t find very good 

evidence. I don’t think—I think the pyramids, for example, were 

probably built by Egyptians. I know that that is a radical idea for 

some people but the Egyptians were very clever and they could certainly do that. 

So I don’t think that there is any good evidence that convinces 

me that we were visited in historic times. 

Mr. COLLINS. How about you, Mr. Werthimer? 

Mr. WERTHIMER. UFOs have nothing to do with extraterrestrials, 

so even though I am optimistic with life, there is no evidence that 

any of these sightings—I think some of these sightings are real 

phenomena. We get a lot of calls when the Space Station goes over, 

although some people embellish and they say it has windows and 

things. And some of it is people’s imagination and we know that 

because it ties very closely to popular culture. When Jules Verne 

wrote about flying saucers, everybody sees—started seeing flying 

saucers. Before that, people saw angels. When people watch movies, then we get a lot of reports that are tied to what is in the movies. And some of it is actually deliberate hoaxes, you know, for people making money. 

Mr. COLLINS. Yeah. Thank you. I think that was my only question, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Collins. 

The gentlewoman from Maryland, Ms. Edwards, is recognized for 

her questions. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I feel like I should 

have been here earlier so I apologize. I have enjoyed the discussion 

thus far and reading the testimony. 

You know, my favorite movie is Contact, right, so every year it 

comes out since 1997 I watch it. I dream. I think, well, you know, 

who knows? What is intriguing about this conversation is the idea 

that—and it is a little bit of hubris, right, that somehow we are 

waiting to find them as opposed to them finding us. And maybe 

that is just the nature of Homo sapiens. That is kind of what we 

do. 

But I am a little bit curious. Dr. Werthimer, in your prepared 

statement you discuss the panchromatic SETI project, which will 

use six telescopes to search nearby stars and stars most likely to 

host an exoplanet system similar to the sun’s. And so the project 

as you described it would examine a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum spanning from low frequencies through optical 

light to detect possible signals from advanced civilization. How are 

the target stars that you have talked about identified and how are 

you going to coordinate the use of the six telescopes? 

Mr. WERTHIMER. We are not trying to use the telescopes all at 

the same time. That is actually hard to do so we just—we use a 

telescope. And other groups are—we are working with a lot of 

groups at universities and observatories. But typically, we will use 

one telescope and then a month later we will use another telescope, 

and so on. 

The stars that we are targeting, we—instead of targeting stars 

that we know have planets because of Kepler spacecraft, it looks 

like all stars have planets, so we are just going to target the nearest stars. So that is our plan is just target the nearby stars. 
66 

Ms. EDWARDS. Great. And you talked also about this notion that 

there are just sort of 24 of you folks most interested robustly, academically studying this, but aren’t there like a whole—there is a 

whole network of people out in communities who kind of feed or 

fuel some of the research that you are doing? 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Seth, you want to take that one? 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Dan refers to me because I don’t think we know 

the answer to that question. In order to do this, it would be like 

saying, you know, sure, there are a few thousand people looking for 

the Higgs Boson but what about the communities that are feeding 

that? If you don’t have the instrument, it is very hard to do the 

experiment. And the number of instruments involved here is very 

small. 

Ms. EDWARDS. So the rest of us are really just, you know, dreaming and pretending that that is what we are—— 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Well— 

Ms. EDWARDS. That is all right. You don’t have to answer that. 

I was not serious at all. And then I want to talk about security 

issues in the time that we have left. 

I understand that early on there was an assessment of the 

robustness of the SETI’s home software to withstand malicious attacks and penetrations. And in the earlier study you found that 

there had been two noteworthy attacks and the web server was 

compromised. And you also found later that exploiting a design 

flaw in your client/server protocol that hackers had actually stolen 

thousands of user email addresses. Can you give us an idea of the 

current state of security? 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Yeah. I think in general downloading software 

and installing it on your computer, you should be careful. It actually turns out that SETI@home is one of the safest things you can 

install on the computer, and the reason is because millions of people are using it and testing it out, and so—and also it has been 

running for a really long time and it is open source software. The 

software is—anybody can read the software and help us—a lot of 

the volunteers actually help us write the software and we are now 

reporting it to cell phones so you can run it on a cell phone, which 

will allow us—a lot of people—even more people to participate in 

the search. 

Ms. EDWARDS. I guess some of the question is just the—when— 

especially whenever you deal with open source, the challenge of the 

system’s vulnerability. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Yeah. I actually think open source software is 

actually a little safer because so many eyeballs can look at it. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Okay. I am done. I think I will just go back to 

watching my movies. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Edwards. 

The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Posey, is recognized for his 

questions. 

Mr. POSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for inviting these distinguished witnesses for this fascinating testimony, 

very enjoyable. 

I go to the SETI Facebook page every day to get a little extra 

factoid, learn something every day. I hadn’t been there a single day 

to find that I already knew your message of the day, very edu-
67 

cational, very inspiring, obviously very interesting, and the graphics are always good, too, and I want to thank you for that. 

On your disclosure I was really impressed with the number of 

agreements and grants. I am just really glad to know that NASA 

is so engaged with what you are doing there and still allow you all 

to have a pretty free hand to do what you do, better I think than 

anybody else is doing it obviously. And so thank you for that. 

Obviously there is some curiosity about your thoughts about such 

things as Project Blue Book. What do you think? 

Dr. SHOSTAK. First off, I want to thank you for noting all those 

grants, by the way, are for the astrobiology research being conducted at SETI Institute. There is actually no federal money going 

to the search for intelligent life. 

Mr. POSEY. Right. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. But we do—the majority of our scientists are doing 

astrobiology, so life on Mars, the outer solar system. In terms of— 

Mr. POSEY. And we are glad you are. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Yes. Well, so are we. I can assure you. And that 

is, I think, a very productive line of research as well. 

In terms of Project Blue Book and the whole UFO phenomenon, 

I am personally quite skeptical. One-third of Americans believe, as 

I say, that we are being visited. That is the result of polls that 

have been taken since the 1960s. That number doesn’t change. And 

by the way, if you think this is an especially American opinion, 

that is wrong. One-third of Europeans, Australians, Japanese, and 

so forth believe that we are being visited. I do not. I honestly do 

not. I don’t think that the evidence is very good. I think that if we 

were being visited, it would not be controversial. It has been, what, 

60-some years since Roswell, for example. If you had asked the 

residents of Massachusetts 60 years after Columbus do you think 

you are being visited by Spaniards, that would not be controversial. 

Mr. POSEY. Yeah. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. I think that if they were really here, everyone 

would know that. 

Mr. POSEY. Okay. Very good. Stephen Hawking, I believe, made 

some comments about contact with extraterrestrials or other life. 

Your thoughts about his comments? 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Yeah. So this is a controversial topic about 

whether we should transmit messages. That is called active SETI, 

or METI, messages to extraterrestrial intelligence. Most people in 

the field think that we are just an emerging civilization and the 

first experiments we should do is just listening, trying to receive 

signals and see what is out there. We think that advanced civilizations are going to be peaceful if you watch Star Trek, but we don’t 

know that and that may be naive. So my feeling is that we should 

be just listening for now and maybe in 1,000 or 10,000 years if we 

don’t hear anything, we should think about transmitting signals. 

But that is a question for all humanity. It shouldn’t be just up to 

a few scientists. And so that is a big decision about who should 

speak for Earth. So right now I think we should be listening and 

that is—I believe that is what Hawking would say as well. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. I am going to disagree a little bit with my colleague here, Dan. I think that there is very little danger in transmitting, and if there is, we are already doing it. Yes, we are not 
68 

deliberately targeting the stars in general, although we have done 

that in the past. NASA sent a Beatles song in 2008 I believe it was 

to the North Star. And it will take 450 years to get there and they 

may or may not like the Beatles but, you know, they used a fairly 

powerful transmitter. But the most powerful transmissions are 

coming off the airports, right, for navigation, for the DEW Line, all 

these things. These signals are on their way into space. They have 

already reached several thousand star systems. Any society that 

has the technical competence to threaten you across dozens, hundreds, thousands of light years of space, any society at that level 

can pick up these signals. So if you are really going to worry about 

this, you better shut down all the radars at the local airports, and 

personally, I don’t think that would be a very good idea. 

Mr. POSEY. Okay. And briefly, still related, your thoughts on thorium. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. I am sorry. I am not familiar with the topic. 

Mr. POSEY. Thorium— 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Are you talking about nuclear— 

Mr. POSEY. Yes. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. —reactors— 

Mr. POSEY. Yes. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. —on thorium? 

Mr. POSEY. Yeah. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. I am really not an expert. I am sorry. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Only this, if you are talking about powering spacecraft— 

Mr. POSEY. Yes. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. If you send spacecraft to some of the more interesting parts of our solar system, they are in the boondocks of the 

solar system, out Jupiter, Saturn, and so forth. When you get to 

Saturn, the amount of sunlight has dropped by a factor of 100 so 

you can’t use solar cells very effectively out there. You have to 

power the craft some way. I wouldn’t worry too much about radioactivity in space of course because space has plenty of radioactivity. 

That is the nature of the cosmos, right. But if you are worried 

about the fact that these launches could go awry and that you 

would land these things on Earth, yes, that is a danger, but of 

course people are aware of that danger and they try and to mitigate. 

Mr. POSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank both the witnesses. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Posey. 

The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Schweikert, is recognized for 

his questions. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to our witnesses. 

So, let’s see, what have we learned so far? We have learned there 

is a chance that aliens don’t like the Beatles, which I have trouble 

imagining, and they don’t like our television programming, and 

there was a couple other things, oh, yeah, and Contact is the best 

movie, right? Somehow I thought that would be funnier. 

A couple mechanical questions I just want to sort of get my head 

around some of the current scientific understanding. Let’s walk 

through a scenario and you tell me if it is plausible or this is cur-
69 

rent thought. Asteroid hits the world, you know, hits our Earth, 

and rock is thrown out into, you know, the stellar, it carries DNA. 

Does that DNA survive? Doctor? 

Dr. SHOSTAK. Yes. This idea is known as panspermia, and I am 

sure you are aware of that, the idea that one world could infect another world has been looked at. People have actually simulated the 

environment of space and put some of our earthly bacteria into a 

rock and put it, as it were, in space to see how long they could survive, for example. You know, would the DNA still be viable when 

it got someplace interesting? And the results, as I understand 

them, suggest that yes, if you are talking about, you know, communicable disease if you will within the solar system, could a rock 

from Mars have ceded the Earth, that is possible. There is no evidence that that occurred but that is possible. The life would survive. It would remain viable over the kind of timescales to send 

rocks in the solar system from one world to another. 

But if you are talking about seeding worlds in other solar systems at the distances of the stars, the problem is space is a pretty 

harsh environment even for a rock because there is a lot of radiation and it is incredibly dry, so anything that is in there is going 

to be suffering desiccation for maybe hundreds of thousands, millions really— 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Yeah. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. —of years before it gets there. And the general consensus that I have heard is that it won’t be viable when it does. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Count on that because I think that is the current sort of thought right now. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Yeah, so as you know, asteroids have hit the 

Earth many times and so it will be a really interesting question if 

life is found in our own solar system, like, for instance, Europa, 

which is a moon going around Jupiter, has a liquid ocean, there 

could be something swimming around down there. By the way, 

when I—I talk to elementary schools and I ask them how are we 

going to get through the ice and see if there is something swimming around down there? The boys all say we should use machine 

guns and bombs and the girls say we should melt our way through 

using mirrors, a little different. But anyway— 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Once again proving there is something in our 

DNA which is different. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. So, if we do find life in our own solar system, 

it would be really exciting to figure out is it exactly the same kind 

of life? Does it use the same DNA, the same amino acids, the same 

nucleotides? Is it identical chemistry? That would mean that rocks 

are going back and forth between these moons and planets in our 

own solar system, and it really happened in one place and was carried back and forth, as Seth was talking about. 

That is not very interesting. What would be much more interesting would be discovering life that is different with a different 

chemistry because if we do find something like that on Europa or 

another moon or Mars, that means that the universe is teeming 

with life. If we can find it in two different kinds of life in our own 

solar system, that means there is a lot of life out there. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Yeah. It makes the imagination wonder. 
70 

Earlier, the Chairman—and I mean this with all the love in the 

world—was trying to say give me a percentage of life out there in 

existence. I remember doing this sort of as a sort of thought process with one of my professors many years ago. And I guess one of 

the mechanisms was from the beginning until today Earth has had 

100 billion species or something of that and how many can do higher math and sort of give you sort of a—and we would use that as 

sort of a benchmark to try to do those calculations. And I guess our 

understanding was it is unknowable, you know—— 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Yeah. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. —of what is out there, what isn’t out there. I 

mean, you know, we see the world of large numbers, large planets, 

you know, these huge numbers. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Um-hum. On Earth intelligence has arisen several times independently. There are a lot of intelligent creatures, 

although none is quite as intelligent as us maybe. We are not sure. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Well, we always used the higher math as 

the—— 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Yeah. But I—my guess is that on some planets 

there are going to be selective pressures that select for different 

kinds of things. You can be successful in life if you are strong or 

fast or—but you can also be successful in some evolutionary environments by being smart, and so I think there are going to be 

places in the universe where it is advantageous to be smart. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. But the—I guess and—for Dr.—the fun in this 

one is how would you ever calculate it? Where—how would you 

ever sort of build your baseline to build from? And when you move 

from sort of hope, which is a powerful thing, to being able to put 

it into a calculator—— 

Mr. WERTHIMER. Yeah. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. —there is often quite a leap there. 

Mr. WERTHIMER. I think it is very difficult to estimate because 

we just have this one example on Earth. And so the—I think the 

only way we are going to find out is to do this search. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. It is very akin, I think, to sitting around in the 

bars of Europe in 1700 trying to estimate the probability that any 

expeditions sent into the deep south—any sailing expedition will 

find the hypothesized southern continent there. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Yeah. 

Dr. SHOSTAK. You know, what is the probability? Can you give 

me that to three figures before I fund to you? You can’t. You can’t. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Yeah. So—— 

Dr. SHOSTAK. You have to do the experiment. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. So therefore it becomes a leap of faith but it 

is—— 

Dr. SHOSTAK. It is a reasonable leap of faith. It is a reasonable 

hypothesis that there is life to be found out there, even intelligent 

life to be found out there. And we can sit around and have a lot 

of drinks and talk about it, but in the end, if you don’t do the experiment, you will just continue to have the drinks. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Well, seeing some of our questions, there may 

have been a lot of drinks going on. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Schweikert. 
71 

Dr. Shostak, Mr. Werthimer, thank you both for your testimony, 

which was clearly appreciated by both Members of Congress as 

well as the audience. 

And I also want to thank the Herndon High School students for 

being here today. You had a wonderful opportunity today to hear 

about a fascinating subject and I hope this will spur you on to 

study not only astrobiology but other scientific subjects as well. 

And in case someone has an interest or wants to follow up on 

this subject, you might go to our Committee’s website, which is 

Science.House.Gov, and we will clearly have some information 

about this hearing on that website, as well as other things that 

might be of interest to you all. 

So thanks again for a wonderful hearing today and we stand adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:03 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

(73) 

Appendix I 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
74 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Dr. Seth Shostak 
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76 
77 
78 
79 
80 
81 
82 
83 
84 
85 

Responses by Mr. Dan Werthimer 
86 
87 
88 
89 
90 
91 
92 

Æ