I'm John Bachelor.

David Livingston, Dr. Space of the Space Show is here as my colleague and co-host. This is Hotel

Mars Episode N. SETI and the discovery of an extraterrestrial life source. Many people have spent

decades thinking about this, and we welcome one of them, Mike Garrett, Michael Garrett, the chairman of

International Academy of Astronautics,

the SETI Committee.

Mike, a very good evening to you.

Thank you.

I saved the best for you.

What is SETI and what is its mission statement?

Good evening.

Good evening.

Thanks, John.

Lovely to be here with both of you.

So SETI is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, basically looking for any telltale

signs of artificial technology that might have imprinted itself on astronomical data.

Traditionally, this has been looking for narrowband radio signals,

the kind of signals that nature doesn't produce. We don't see narrow band radio signals, the kind of signals that nature doesn't produce.

We don't see narrow band radio signals from planets or stars or galaxies.

But our technology produces these narrow band signals.

That's how we, at least in the past, have communicated radio stations, TV stations, for

example. So we're looking for the technology of other civilizations. And if we find that

...