This is Gulf Coast life.

Im Mike Kiniry, thanks for joining us whether or not we will ever find irrefutable proof that humans are not alone in the universe is something that has been speculated about since the dawn of humanity.

As the scientific age arose from the first crewed telescopes to modern space exploration, the idea that actually finding real proof has seemingly come into closer reach.

Over the decades, astronomers and astrophysicists and the like have been taking all sorts of approaches to studying the galaxy, some of them in hopes of finding some kind of evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Whether a signal we can interpret, or a sign of life seen from afar by space telescopes or microbes in the soil of some other planets or planetary body, and the science has come really far.

For instance, up until 1995, it was only predicted that other stars in the galaxy might have planets around them like our sun does.

But now we found more than 6000, and it's looking like there are countless more.

That's because our space telescopes and land based ones are becoming more powerful, and our ability to sift through the data they collect is getting better all the time.

And we've got things like rovers searching places like Mars for microbial proof, and it suddenly doesn't seem all that far fetched that one day we will have a news headline that reads irrefutable proof of life beyond Earth has been found.

But what happens then, and will irrefutable still be refuted by some?

And what would the implications be?

From shaking the foundations of some faiths to adding a new global dynamic to an already tense world?

I'm joined today by two people who are part of the new limited run podcast called When We Find Them, that talks to people from all backgrounds to try to approach these questions and more.

Brendan Byrne is assistant news director at Central Florida Public Media, and he's the writer and host of When We Find Them.

He also hosts Are We There Yet?

Welcome back to the show, Brendan.

Thanks for having me, Mike.

Always a pleasure.

And Doctor Amy Williams is an associate professor of geology at University of Florida.

Her work focus is on astrobiology, geo biology, organic geochemistry and planetary science.

And she's one of the voices in When We Find them.

Welcome to the show, Doctor Williams.

Thanks so much for inviting me.

This is awesome.

So for starters, Doctor Williams, tell us a bit about yourself and your background.

And like we sort of established right before we started, you know, you were a professor of geology, but I guess geology includes non terrestrial stuff.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your work.

Yeah.

If you think about what planets are made of, at least the inner rocky worlds are in fact made of rock.

Geologists like to study rocks.

And so that's where I get an opportunity to work on Earth as well as other worlds.

I am an associate professor at the University of Florida.

I started out as an environmental scientist, moved into more hard rock geology, and now I'll try to kind of marry the fields between geology and microbiology and chemistry to answer a lot of questions about planets.

But the big one that we're going to talk about today is is there life beyond Earth, and if so, how might we detect it?

I mentioned Rovers in the intro.

And you work on two NASA rover teams, right?

Can you tell us just a bit about that?

I do have an incredible opportunity.

I've been working with the curiosity rover mission for more than 14 years, and I also work on the newer flagship Mars rover mission, which is perseverance.

On both of those, I have the opportunity to work to characterize habitable environments, places where life might have wanted to live in the distant past if it had ever been there.

And then with the more recent mission, we're actually looking for evidence of ancient life preserved in the rocks on Mars.

What does life mean in the context of what you might find on Mars?

The life that we're looking for.

It's not big dynamic macro fauna, at least not right now.

What I generally focus on are what we think of as today's bacteria.

So microbial organisms, single cell organisms, they're actually really robust to what I would describe as challenging environments.

There are organisms on Earth that can live in the water of nuclear reactors.

So we are looking for those organisms that sort of push the boundaries of of life on Earth.

And those are the kinds of things that we're interested in looking for on Mars.

Brendan.

So what's the origin of when we find them?

You know, you host are we there yet?

We broadcast it in is a podcast, you know, when did this first come into your mind as something you wanted to put together?

Well, I've had the opportunity to talk to all sorts of people who are on the hunt for, for life out there.

You know, Doctor Williams is is one of those people.

She is on our show probably about once every 4 to 6 weeks telling us about what cool things they have found on Mars.

We talked to scientists who are looking at exoplanets and radio astronomers who are listening for potential signals out there.

And the more we learned on are we there yet?

The the more I realized that the closer we are to getting to that moment where there is some sort of definitive evidence, whether it's the work that Williams is doing or we hear something as a part of the study initiative.

So I needed to start thinking about how I'm going to cover that story as a reporter.

And and so I start asking around and, and, and really, I found that, that we're not exactly sure how we know what's going to lead up to that moment.

Right.

What what scientists are doing to find these things, this, this high bar of, of proof that they need to have for for evidence that would that would that would say that that we are not alone out there.

We're not really sure what's going to happen the day after we make the announcement.

And so that's kind of what, when we find them looked at it, looked at the efforts that that that are out there, but also the kind of uncertainty and the questions that we still have about what happens next when that announcement is made and how we all as, as humans, may change when you know the perceptions of who we are and where we are are different than they've ever been before.

The first episode kicks off with this idea of of, there's going to have to be a press conference called, can you just pick it up from there?

You know, you're a reporter, you'd be at that press conference.

But, you know, why did you start with that particular image?

You know, I think because when I talk to and the person who who told me that this was this was years ago is a Bill diamond.

He's the president and CEO of the CT Institute, which is a nonprofit organization that's kind of coordinating the search for SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

And, you know, I just asked him, you know, what would happen, you know, how would you make that announcement?

And he told me it'd be like a press release or a press conference.

And, you know, to me, that was that was kind of extraordinary because I've covered hundreds of press conferences.

Normally they are rather mundane.

You know, these are a part of my job.

And, you know, kind of the, the biggest news of, of our species, was going to come from a press conference, and that was that was a little strange to me.

But, you know, as we learned in the podcast, there is so much happening in our media landscape that, you know, a press conference we think is probably the best way to get information out there to people.

So as mundane and and ordinary as it is, we really should be having a press conference.

And there have been, you know, press conferences that announce, you know, massive findings.

I'm thinking of the gravitational wave, press conference or the direct images of a black hole, like, you know, you can have these, these large events via press conference.

So, so, yeah, it got me thinking about what that day would be and what my assignment would be and how I would tell that story.

And, and I had a lot of questions to ask about that day.

Well, we'll have to have you back when you go to that press conference someday.

So I'm all caught up.

I listened to episode five this morning.

I've enjoyed how you've built the story and like, how it all comes together.

You talk with scientists, scholars, religious leaders, anthropologists, politicians, journalists.

Would it be fair to say from the people you've talked to, that it is not considered all that crazy anymore to think that we might be on the cusp of something, even if cusp means a decade or something.

But it seems like people aren't afraid to speculate that we might be actually getting close to something.

Is that about right?

Yeah.

It's not a matter of if at this point it's it's a matter of when.

And as you alluded to, you know, that that when is is very different depending on, on who you ask.

I asked every person that I interviewed for this podcast if, if they could take a guess as to when it was and, and the final episode, you'll, you'll hear that, you know, there is a that runs the gamut as to, you know, it could be tomorrow, it could be 500 years from now.

But we're getting ever closer each and every day.

As you alluded to, were our telescopes are more powerful and far more sensitive than ever before.

Amy's colleagues on, on on the planet Mars are doing incredible work and have really, really sensitive instruments, that are getting closer and closer to us, potentially finding that that that hidden chemical signature within the rocks of Mars.

It seems like every day there is a new story about some discovery or some technological advancement that is getting us closer and closer to that.

So yeah, it's not a matter of if.

It's a matter of when.

Doctor, doctor Williams, you know, you can't speak for your colleagues, but the people who are on the teams that you're working on, who have rovers on Mars, I mean, is is it a hope?

Is it a, you know, what is the perspective among people who are doing that kind of work as to whether it's realistic that we're going to find something, including your own perspective?

I think it's it's always this joke that you have to be optimistic to be an astronaut.

And I try to approach the, the study of of is their life beyond Earth by approaching it with a cautious optimism.

It I would be out of a job pretty quickly if I didn't have the hopes that we could build an instrument that could detect life beyond Earth.

As far as when we're working on these missions, especially perseverance, which is actually looking for evidence of extinct life preserved in the rocks.

What we've done is get some of the the world's leaders in looking at ancient rocks on Earth and had them apply their knowledge to looking at ancient rocks on Mars.

And so we're we're trying to leverage basically the greatest skill sets that we have on Earth to try to answer this question on Mars.

We, you know, with a rover, you can pick one location, maybe with many kilometers or tens of kilometers of distance that you can explore within that location to, to search for that evidence of extinct life preserved in the rocks.

And that's exactly what perseverance has been doing.

We went to a location that, it was a dry lake bed.

It has evidence for a river that flowed into that lake in the ancient past.

And those are the types of environments on Earth where we would look for that evidence of life.

So it made sense to start there on Mars.

And so we have found a couple of, of really compelling findings that hint at the potential for biosignatures, basically evidence of life, even if that life is gone now.

And so there are the kinds of things that, that give us great hope that we are on the right track.

It's not something that's definitive yet.

Otherwise we probably would rename Brennan's podcast.

So we're we're obviously optimistic.

We are applying the skills that we are, that that have borne out evidence for ancient life on Earth.

And we're, we're leveraging that to search for that ancient life on Mars.

But of course, you know, there's there's plenty of other destinations that we have interest in for either evidence of extinct life, extant life, or, even prebiotic chemistry, the kind of stuff that probably built the origin of life, at least for life on Earth.

So there's there's this whole spectrum of environments on planetary bodies just in our solar system to begin with that we are just beginning to explore.

And as as you mentioned before, you know, we're finding planetary systems around basically every star that we explore in our galaxy.

And so how many other worlds might have this type of potential?

It it could be innumerable.

And that's what's one of the really exciting things about astrobiology for me is the the opportunity and the potential.

So I'll say I'm an optimistic person.

And as an astrobiologist, I think they're out there, and I'm hopeful that we will find them in my lifetime, because I would love to see sort of my, my life's career, born out in, in making that discovery or seeing that discovery at some point.

Do the rovers on Mars have instruments that are able to do that science up there?

And I guess what I'm really asking for is if we were able to bring stuff back, which I know has kind of been planned but disrupted, would we have a much better chance of knowing what's in that, or is the instrumentation up there good enough?

If that makes sense.

One of the things to keep in mind with Rovers is that you are power and space limited and mass limited at launch as well.

So I think that our scientists and engineers have done phenomenal jobs of building these basically roving chemistry labs that are able to explore another world, perform all these experiments that we truly do in the labs here on Earth.

And they can help us address a couple of different questions with curiosity.

It's are the environments that we explore on Mars.

Would they have been capable of supporting microbial life, things like our bacteria here on Earth?

And then perseverance, of course, is looking for a slightly more specific evidence for ancient life preserved in rocks.

And so the instruments that we sent with perseverance were originally meant to sort of triage these samples, to pick the most promising samples for that, that question whether there's life preserved in those rocks.

And we can take a core of that sample.

We put it in these hermetically sealed tubes, and the intention was to eventually return them to Earth.

I'll say the intention is to eventually maybe return them to Earth.

There's been disruptions in sort of the architecture of the Mars sample return, program as it was originally envisioned.

And so I am optimistic that we will get samples back that can help provide for more definitive proof of what we consider potential biosignatures, things that if you saw it on Earth, you would say, yeah, of course, life had something to do with forming this texture or this pattern or these minerals, but on Mars, you the burden of proof is higher, the bar is higher.

So there there are few instruments that would give you anything definitive.

And I think you would need multiple lines of evidence, especially from the rover missions, to say, yeah, yeah, life made that.

So by returning the samples, you actually have the opportunity to use sort of our cutting edge instruments here on Earth to address those questions and be able to perform replicate analyzes, which is one of the big things that we look for in coming to a conclusion, especially about a major finding something like this.

Brendan, you know, and the people you've talked to and the, the, the media climate we live in the, the ability to create, you know, stuff with AI that looks real but maybe isn't.

If Doctor Williams team found proof that there was microbial life and there was a press conference, you know, I almost think that people would just be like, well, it's just microbial.

It's not an alien, you know what I mean?

Like, what did you what did you find from people when it comes to, you know, how shocking something like microbial life would be, if that makes sense.

I would, I would hope that Doctor Williams comes to me first or gives me an exclusive interview when, when her team does that.

But, you know, that is, that is something that we did talk about is, you know, will people be as excited with something like this?

You know, if it's, you know, a sign of ancient life, you know, is that groundbreaking?

And one of the points that that Amy brings up in, in the podcast is, you know, we look at the times where we almost found them, right where we thought we did.

And there was, in the 1990s, a, a finding in a martian meteorite, where scientists thought that there was, you know, preserve life within that.

And so far that, that, you know, President Clinton addressed the nation and talked about this, you know, and one of the things that that Amy brings up is that, you know, people still think that that's real.

It was it was disproved.

It actually wasn't, you know, evidence of life there.

But but people still think, hey, we've already found it.

And, and another argument that was made in the podcast is there is so much saturation in headlines already about the times that we almost thought we found it, or that people think that we did find it.

Right.

You know, there is Atlas 3IA, which was an interstellar comet that, you know, some people believed was an alien spaceship.

And so, you know, we we come with this press conference happens and, you know, journalists like myself write the story based on on these, these facts.

And people surely might not believe it, but one of the things that that I think is really important to, to bring up and what's what's frustrating for me as a journalist, but very important for science, is that, you know, scientists like Doctor Williams have such a high bar of proof that they need for them to definitively say something is, in fact, life elsewhere.

You know, Doctor Williams on the podcast, she, she, introduced me years ago to the Sagan standard, which extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

So my hope is that with the transparency of a finding like this, for when Doctor Williams and her colleagues lay out all of the things that they found, all of that extraordinary evidence is there.

It is irrefutable, both in the scientific community and in the public and media in general, because they have showed their work.

It is there.

And, and this process is going to take a while.

The scientific method takes a while, and that's on purpose, right?

We need other scientists to either prove or disprove whatever finding Doctor Williams has.

Is, is is credible.

And she will not take offense to that because that is the scientific method.

So, you know, I think.

To.

Yes, yes, I think more media literacy and more science literacy is really going to help in, in a situation like this when it happens.

Because, Mike, you're right.

There is we're in the age of social media, where things can get published and go very, very far without, you know, any sourcing.

And you know, that that whisper becomes fact and, and even like there is a group, a global group that is writing these protocols for what they find.

And we talk to the, the, the scientists that shared this group.

And he said, we're behind the curve when it comes to social media.

When it comes to the guidelines for these announcements as well.

So, we are definitely in in a new era that's going to be very, very interesting, to say the least, to navigate when this discovery is announced.

We're coming up toward the end, so we can't go too far into this.

But you talk to somebody, I forget his name, but I think he said he was an astro theologist or something like that.

And he cited a study from 2008 that said, like something like 80 or 90% of faith leaders said that it would not have any kind of big fundamental change or challenge to their faith.

And I thought that was a really interesting perspective.

Yeah, that's Ted Peters.

He's an academic.

And it wasn't faith leaders.

It was it was people of faith, people of faith and people of faith.

Yeah.

And essentially he they would self-described if if they what, what faith they, they belong to or believed in and whether or not a finding of extraterrestrial life would shake their, their religious foundations.

And a vast majority of them said no.

And in fact, the only people that thought there would be disruption in religion were the atheists who thought that the religious people would not understand it.

So that was certainly something that that was that my preconceived notion was certainly altered.

After talking with with Ted Peters, we also talked to other faith leaders, and in Judaism and in Islamic scholar, and for the most part, that is that is what they all believe, that that a finding like this would, would actually reaffirm their faith.

I think he said also that among people who were Buddhist, that he told it was it was 100% said it would be all good.

Yeah.

And, and.

And Ted Peters did acknowledge that this this is a you know, this is older.

It was from 2008.

It certainly needs to be done again.

But but you know, with the the faith leaders that I talked to, you know, even in recent conversations, they all feel the same way.

But yes, the Buddhist were all for it 100%.

Last question.

You got to be quick, Doctor Williams.

Any cool science that you're working on that we haven't talked about that you'd like to highlight?

Oh, there's always cool science coming out of the rovers, coming out of analog work that we're doing here on Earth.

I'll say one of the cool things that happened recently is that the perseverance rover, passed a marathon and actually became the vehicle that's driven the furthest on another world.

So I would say that in addition to our ability to search for life beyond Earth, we are getting better at driving to new locations, even flying to new locations, like with the Dragonfly Octa copter that's going to go to tighten.

So there's there's a lot of cool stuff on the horizon, I'd say.

Keep your eyes peeled for awesome science coming out from NASA and other space agencies.

Doctor Amy Williams is an associate professor of geology at the University of Florida.

Thank you so much for your time, doctor Williams.

Thanks so much for having me on here, Mike.

This was awesome.

Brendan Byrne is assistant news director at Central Florida Public Media, and he's the writer and host of the limited run podcast When We Find Them.

It concludes with its sixth episode on Wednesday, October 28th.

He also hosts the podcast radio show.

Are We there yet?

And does a bunch of space reporting for NPR.

Always a pleasure to you as well.

Brendan and Mike, we are doing a season.

Two, so stick around.

Thanks for having me on.

I was thinking it could go on forever because, I mean, maybe.

Well, until we find them, when we find them is available wherever you find podcasts.

Are we there yet?

Is on Saturday evenings at 730 on WGCU You can find links on our website.

WGCU.ORG/GCL, our show today was produced by yours truly with audio production and video production by Matt Krause For now, thanks for listening, Im Mike K This is WGCU FM, Fort Myers 90.1 WMKO Marco Island 91.7 FM.

We are NPR f or Southwest Florida.