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Military satellite research brought us GPS. Astronomers influenced medical imaging tech. What would be invented after we discover alien life? Professor Sara Seager explains the consequences of such a groundbreaking discovery.
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If we discovered life, like robust evidence for life on another planet, it would have incredible scientific consequences
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Because if life emerged two separate times, like two independent times from each other
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it will give us information that there's a high likelihood that our galaxy, our universe is teeming with life
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In this current moment, we have evidence of complex molecules on Mars
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We know about liquid environments where liquid is required for life in the Venus atmosphere
0:44
We think there's liquid subsurface on Mars. we have liquid on many moons of Jupiter and Saturn
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It means somewhere out there, there could be intelligent life. And that is something we're going to have to grapple with
0:58
And to people who that matters for, it's going to change their view. I can tell you a story that a number of years ago
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I went to Thunder Bay, Ontario, to be a keynote speaker for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada
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And I was billeted by a spunky widow who is Catholic. and she wanted me to meet her Catholic friends
1:18
And she had been telling them in astronomy that there are a lot of planets out there, but the people didn't really want to believe it
1:24
because it was like a harsh reality for their own system of thinking. So all she wanted me to do was to explain them
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that it's a legit field. We have evidence that there are planets out there. We don't know about life or Earth-like planets yet
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And this really had a big impact on her community. And we stayed up late talking
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and we called it the awakening, that there are other planets out there
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And it'll be even bigger awakening when we do find signs of life to regroup our own thinking
1:51
We like to draw a parallel with Copernicus who proposed that our Earth is not the center of the universe but in fact our sun is the center and the Earth and all of our planets go around our sun
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And back then, hundreds of years ago, it was hearsay. Like, you just couldn't do that because
2:09
our Earth was the center according to religion. Do you think there was a definitive moment when
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everyone agreed, oh, wow, this is amazing. Hey, it's so exciting. Our Earth goes around our sun
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everything goes around our sun. In fact, no, no, there was not a definitive moment. It took a very
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long time for it to happen. And I'm guessing that when it finally did happen, it wasn't
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celebrated. It took a really long time to have like legit definitive proof
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And so over hundreds of years, which is likely to be the same for our definitive
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signs of life, it'll just be something as part of our culture
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sometimes people wonder why bother with pure science but pure science leads us to great places
2:51
like the discovery of insulin for example or in terms of astronomy our field has really helped
2:57
with medical imaging because we take data of the night sky and astronomy and we have to convert it
3:02
into images and we have my favorite example is gps like who doesn't use gps on a daily basis
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But do you think someone planned, hey, let's have a way that we can all find out where we are and where everyone else is
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No. It was just people fooling around with rocketry, wanting to see if they could launch rockets and try to get in Earth orbit
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So the question is, will the search for life lead us to any practical discovery
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It's all really to be determined. So oftentimes the giant leaps forward
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They're few and far between for sure, but we can't get there purposely
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We have to get there by this random walk through science, through discovery
#Astronomy