There's, like, this taboo thing to talk about UFOs and UAPs. Even the scientists were commenting to me, how could you go and talk about UAPs or UFOs? Most people just kinda wanna know what's going on. Most people are just going about their lives, and they are genuinely curious. And because there's this kind of vacuum about real information, that's where you get kind of conspiracy theories that people with the loud horns can come in and fill that space.

Welcome everybody to an exciting out out of this universe episode of the Into the Impossible podcast with not only an eminent astrophysicist and not only a fellow professor, but a very good friend, and that's professor Shelley Wright. Shelley, welcome to the Into the Impossible podcast.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here today.

I wanna first start off with a discussion about what makes you interested in the research that you do. Explain the types of science that you do, both on the in this world or in this universe normal astrophysicists, quote, unquote, do.

I love tinkering and making new instruments to explore the universe in new ways. That's That's basically it. I love working with engineers, scientists, students to make unique cameras, spectrographs, use new telescopes to really do any discoveries across the universe. And then one of my deep part interests is the understanding of life in the universe. Are we alone? Is there potentially other civilizations out there? Could they be communicating with us right now in our own galaxy? And if they were, how could we use technology to detect those signals?

One of the things I always talk about that gets me into trouble when I talk about people, I'm I'm sort of an alien pessimist, an alien minimalist, if you will, and that rubs some of my viewers even the wrong wrong way. Some of my friends get really agitated by the fact that I have a I would never say the probability is zero, but looking through how, you know, improbable it is that you and I are having this conversation, the fact is we don't have any evidence right now that there are other life forms that rise to the level of many, many sigma confidence levels. Right? So I think, you know, from my perspective, it would be one of the biggest, if not the biggest discovery of all time, but we always have to tamper that with with our expectations as scientists should be driven by data. And one of the arguments I want you to react to is people say things like, well, you know, there's 10 to the 20, you know, possible stars in the observable universe. Each one of them could have a 10 to a hundred planets around them or minor bodies. There's got to be life out there. How do you react to that argument? Do you think it's plausible?

That there's other life out there? Or we're already proof of one. Yeah. So I think it's a little hubris to think that we could not be the only one. The question here is in time, and time is what you know well, the age of the universe, and the question really is not whether there's other life in the universe or whether there's other life in the galaxy. Probably a good standpoint science question is, is there other life that coexist in this moment with us talking right now? And if you put it in that frame, like, you think about the Drake equation, which tries to calculate the number of civilizations or communicating civilizations, the leading factor of that is time. Right? Like the lifetime of life existing and coexisting with us. So you could take the premise that we are one of that 10 of the 22. That's a pretty boring universe in my opinion, but that is an opinion.

And, you know, that's where you need data. But if you take the premise that we should not be the only ones, right, that we were a byproduct, life was a byproduct, bathroom scum's a byproduct, dogs or cats, dolphins to humans are a byproduct of this universe, of our baryonic universe for you, then the question is whether they could exist with us in our own galaxy. Are they existing around other planets that have similar characterizations of of habitability like Earth? And then the rough part here in that calculation is could they potentially be coexisting us in this small sliver. Right? Like, we are our technology in this moment is just the tiniest sliver of time in all of the age of the universe. So that I think time is the most important answer to your question.

Mhmm. Now you not only knew Frank Drake, you also won the Drake award. What was Frank like? I mean, he was one of the guests that kinda got away. I never got to meet him or have a conversation on the channel with him.