Bill Nye: Are We Actually Aliens? #TuesdaysWithBill | Big Think
This is Jesse from central Texas. What are some of the reasons you think extraterrestrials will come to Earth, and how should we react to them, and how do you think we will react to them?
And on top of that, what are some of the consequences things like organized religion will have when they eventually make it here?
Jesse, I kind of thought that’s where you were going when you started with the aliens coming from some other world, and then, well, how do you think religions will react? I guess it depends on the religion. The current Pope is going to roll with it. He’s going to send Vatican scientists out there to take a meeting with them, and they’ll speak Latin or whatever the heck. But I know what you’re driving at.
If you want to think about this, Jesse, talk about extraterrestrials. You say what’s going to happen when they visit. I don’t think they’re going to visit. However, it’s very reasonable that we will, in Carl Sagan fashion, detect a signal from some other star system. That’s very reasonable. I make no guarantees. It’s the Christmas light problem, the holiday light problem, where the lights are blinking.
Our light of being able to receive electromagnetic waves from another civilization has to be on when another blinking civilization light is on so that we can cross paths not only in space but in time. We have to have both civilizations existing at the same time. And with a universe that’s at least 13.6 billion years old, it’s not necessarily a given thing that everybody will be off—their lights will be on at the same time.
And if you want to think about this, Jesse, and religions, it’s very reasonable, absolutely not proven. We may have the means to prove it: it’s very reasonable that you and I are descendants of extraterrestrials. They just found liquid water on Mars—super salty water on Mars that flows every—apparently flows every Martian year, every time Mars goes around the sun. It gets warm enough in this one area; the liquid water flows for a while, briny water evaporates.
It’s very reasonable that there’s something alive on Mars or certainly that there was something alive on Mars. Then it’s very reasonable that Mars was hit with an impact. You can show that Mars was hit with an impact or comet or asteroid about three billion years ago. Some of the material of Mars was thrown off into space, and some of it landed here. We find rocks on Earth that are clearly of Martian origin. I bought one online for kicks.
And suppose some especially robust Martian microbe—a Marscrobe—was in this piece of material, landed on Earth in an especially fertile era three billion years ago. And you and I are descendants of Martians. Do, do, do, do—do, do, do, do. And one of the things you mentioned is religion, and you mentioned that you were in Texas. I will say I did this debate with this guy in Kentucky who has been very outspoken that he thinks NASA—National Aeronautics and Space Administration—is wasting tax dollars looking for life elsewhere because he, as near as I can tell, believes that he has a book written 50 centuries ago, translated into English, translated many times.
He believes that’s what’s in this book overwhelms everything that we can observe and record and infer about nature. So I guess it depends on the religions how religions will react when we discover life on another world or we receive a signal from another civilization. That’s a cool question, man. Carry on.