# CONTACT (backyard radio telescope part II)

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Angela Collier 
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

I moved. Did you do the homework? I read the book. I'm going to spoil the hell out of it. So, if you want I mean, it's 30 years old, but I guess stop now. Spoilers. So, Contact is a science fiction novel published by famous scientist and science communicator Carl Sean in 1985. I don't know much about how the film industry works, but this was like a treatment, a script that Carl Sean shopped around in the late 1970s and no one bought it. So Carl Sean decided to publish this as a novel when Simon and Schustster in 1981 approached him and offered him a $2 million advance to buy the script and turn it into a novel. And I don't know a lot about the book industry either, but I imagine that sum of money is also a startling and shocking amount of money for an advance on a book, especially a first novel. Like he had written other books, but this was his first novel. And of course, it was made into a film in 1997 directed by Robertis starring Jodie Foster. And we're going to talk about both, but we will start with the book. So this book is in three parts. Part one, the message. Humans receive a message from space. In part one of this video series, I built a radio telescope. And in that video, I mentioned contact as kind of the most famous example in media of someone doing radio telescopy. Our hero Dr. Ellie Aroway works at Irisbo. You know, RIP. my shirt. I don't know if you can tell. This is Aerosibo merch and I bought it at a thrift store in Boston, which I guess isn't that weird. I imagine there's a high concentration of astrophysicists in Boston and one of them just had the shirt and gave it to a savers. But I think it's pretty cool. Also, yeah, I did make this cardigan. Thank you for asking. Anyway, Ellieway is at Aerosibo when she's offered the chance to be a project leader for SETI at the VA and while at the VA, her team gets a message from Vega and there's just like a lot to unpack here. So, SETI is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The VA is the very large array in New Mexico. I mentioned in the last video that telescopes big buckets that catch photons. Aerosibo is a big bucket that's tuned to radio frequency photons and the VA is a bunch of tiny buckets that work together to act as one big bucket to catch radio frequency photons. Aerosibo is famous for broadcasting. When we think of radio telescopes, we think of them as like receivers, not so much broadcasters. But in 1974, Arisibo broadcast a message toward the direction of N13. So M13 stands for Messier object 13. Charles Messier was an astronomer in the 1800s and he was looking for comets. So he had an 1800's type of telescope. It wasn't the best and he would point it at bright objects in the sky and leave it there. And if he came back sometime later and the object was still in the eyepiece, meaning it hadn't moved across the sky, meaning it wasn't a comet, he would just like write it down in his little book of like a catalog of uninteresting objects, right? So, you know, hundreds of years later, we can use our modern telescopes and we can look at his catalog of uninteresting things and we see these big beautiful objects, including M13, Messier Objects 13, which is a globular cluster. And I'm very biased because globular clusters are my favorite thing to look at in telescopes. Globial clusters are these massive stellar structures. They're some of the oldest objects in the universe. And when you look at them in an eyepiece, you can see like all the tiny little dots making up like tens of stars, but you also see a lot of color. I think that's really nice to see in like an optical telescope, you know. big recommend if you're ever standing next to someone with a pretty nice telescope, ask if you can see a globular cluster, but don't touch their telescope. For some reason, when you set up a telescope and there's like a line of people waiting to look at the thing in the telescope, you'll be like, "Oh, hey, come look at Saturn. " And you know what they do? You know what the first thing they do is they grab the eyepiece and they pull it towards their face. And it's just like, "Well, well, now Saturn's not in there anymore. Now I have to refind the object. You don't touch the eyepiece. You move the telescope if you touch the eyepiece. I don't know why everyone does that. Anyway, Arosibo sent a message towards M13, a globular cluster in 1974. The

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

message looks like this. It contains information about counting numbers and elementary chemical structure and the structure of DNA. And it's got a little human-shaped thing and a little telescope shaped solar system diagram. This message was sent one single time and it will take 25,000 years to get to M13 because M13 is 25,000 lighty years away. The sending of this message has made a lot of people angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Uh there's two camps. First, you have alien people. Not aliens, but people who are very interested in the existence of aliens. These alien people really think that if we send a signal to space, hyper technologically advanced aliens are going to warp drive right over and just enslave the planet. Stephven Hawking was one of these people. Alien people would be a different video, but Stephven Hawking thought we should like hide and keep the lights off kind of, not let the universe know we're here. The other group of people who think the Aerosibo message were a bad idea or people who think it was just really stupid, like a waste of time. Like, you sent one message one time. You sent it one time. Like, it's going to travel for 25,000 years. What if it happens on a holiday and their telescope's not on? Like, you got to send the message constantly forever in order for anyone to ever catch the message. This is so stupid. Why would you do this? What a waste of time and money. And what these two teams do not understand, I think, is that the aerosibo message, Aerosibo, the Aerosbo message was not a sincere attempt at contacting alien species. It was more like a display of uh technological like prowess. It was kind of an introspective discussion on what would we send if we thought we could connect to aliens? Like what would that look like? Well, it would look something like this. We would have to speak in the language of science because aliens of course would not speak English and even on our own planet huge fraction of people don't speak that language but science is the same everywhere. Physics No one is going to read hi we're humans from earth happy to meet you but they will know oh hey there is that element with one proton and one electron. Even if they don't call it hydrogen, they will know what that is. They'll have a different word for it, but they'll know what that is because physics is the same throughout the universe. So, why did they do this in radio? Why send a message in radio? And the answer is because radio waves are fast. Sometimes I don't know if I should say that was a joke. You got that? That was a joke, right? Because in part one, we talked about how photons travel at sea in space. We talked about the whole electromagnetic spectrum and how you can have x-rays or gamma rays or optical photons. They can vary wildly in energy and frequency, but they all travel at sea and they can all carry data. So if photons of all energies can carry a message, why do we specifically look and send radio waves? Think of it from the sender's perspective. Imagine you want to put a signal in an X-ray and send it out into space. You would need a source of X-rays to tune to be whatever message you want to send, right? So, how will you get a source of X-rays, a giant source that will continually produce a bunch of X-rays? I guess you could build like a synretron around the moon. You could do that or you could just send a radio wave. Like you shove an electrical signal through an antenna and you can produce a bunch of radio waves. So like it's just the cheaper option. It's the cheaper thing to do. It makes more sense to send radio waves. Think about it from the receiving end. Um if some alien species exists, and I will just lay all my cards out on the table and say I'm sure that they do. It's just a numbers game. If they do, they would have evolved, I think, on a planet with a thick atmosphere that can shield them from things like X-rays from space that, you know, alter people's DNA and give them cancer and stuff. So, if you want to send a message, you probably want the likelihood of them hearing it to be high. So, you would want to send something like a radio signal that could just go straight through an atmosphere. It just makes sense to work in radio. I mean, probably. Honestly, if you're asking why send radio signals, the answer is probably because it's cheapest. But you could also think about it from like an alien psychology standpoint, like intelligent life on other planets probably will go through some sort of similar technological advancement series that we did here. And that just means that they

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

will build radio sources long before they build X-ray sources the same way we did. It's like of course you'll build a wheel before you build a combustion engine. Do you know what I mean? I mean probably. So that means if they receive a radio signal, they would know what to do with that. They would know how to look at it and analyze it and get the message out of it. How do you attach a message to some photons? Well, let's talk about how the Veagans do it in the book. And I have to say it's very the aliens are sending this message from Vega. So, they call them vegans, which is totally fine, except that word in a book is spelled the same way as vegans. And so, every time I'm trying to read, I read the word vegans. So, don't make fun of me if that happens. Okay. So, now let's talk about the book. How did the V veans attach a message to their radio signal and how did we receive it in the book? Great. So, they're at the VA big telescope, right? So, the guy working the night shift at the VA is alerted by the computer that they have a candidate observation. He's alerted by the computer because of course it would be very silly for them just to be sitting there and staring at real time data as it comes in. It would even be sillier if for some strange reason they were collecting the radio signal and then converting it to some sort of audio frequency and listening to it on headphones. That would be really wild. That would be a silly thing to do. Why would anyone ever listen to radio telescope data on headphones? Pretend we haven't seen the movie yet. So he calls Ellie on the phone. Ellie is his boss. She's the project manager and he's like, "Hey, we have a candidate signal. " And she drives in very excited and they look at the data with their eyes on the computer screen and they notice that the pulses are a series of prime numbers. And this, of course, is very exciting. It means the signal is artificial because no pulsar would I mean, God, space is big, right? It's a numbers game. Anything could happen. But like it is very strange that a natural object would be pulsing in a series of prime numbers. That is a way that you would expect species across galaxies to communicate with each other and say, "Hey, we also know math, right? So this is very exciting. " And Ellieway very excitedly alerts the world of astronomers and is like, "Point all your telescopes towards Vega. were receiving a signal and so all across the world astronomers are also receiving this prime number signal and Ellie and team are looking at the data and they realize what they thought was noise like so you get like two pulses for prime number two noise three three noise five pulses for prime number five you know etc they thought that was noise they look at the noise they start analyzing it and they realize guys that what they're actually seeing is a radio broadcast of Adolf Hitler. Yeah, that's in the book. So, the reason is because the first ever radio broadcast was the Germans at the start of the Olympic Games, Adolf Hitler giving a speech. Am I going to get demonetized because I'm saying Hitler? Uh the Germans were showing off their technological prowess by being like, "Look, we can broadcast images with sound across radio waves. Look at how advanced we are. " And that of course went out to space. So presumably what Ellie and team are thinking is that the Veans saw that broadcast which alerted them to like, "Oh, intelligent life on that planet. " And now they're sending it back to us to be like, "Hey, we saw your message and it was Hitler. " And of course, this is very distressing. The president in the book is super annoyed that like our first like ambassador mission to like intelligent species in the galaxies is Hitler. This is of course distressing to the American president in 1985. Just to give some context for modern viewers, in 1985 the American government still knew and recognized that the Nazis were the bad guys. So this was shocking for them. So that that's two ways you can attach data to photons, right? You can send a pulse, a big loud sound that's like prime numbers. Also, the frequency that they're listening at is like hydrogen times pi or something. There's lots of ways to be like, hey, this is a very specific signal and not a

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00)

like natural signal. And then once you get people to listen to it, you can add stuff to the noise and you can add a little message. It's very interesting. And then this is kind of where the book is in part one. They're like, "Okay, we have the prime numbers. This is definitely not natural. This is definitely aliens telling us something. Oh no. " They're saying that they know that we had a whole Hitler issue. And this is kind of where it sits. They're like, "Well, what do we do with this? " Until there's a whole billionaire subplot in this book that I just like I don't want to get into right now. the billionaire is apparently a genius and gets in touch with Ellie and he says, "Hey, have you looked at the phase modulation? " And um voila. You know, inside the phase modulation is actually incredibly detailed instructions on the building of a machine. And you might ask, what is phase modulation? When a wave of light comes at you, visible light, radio light, any kind of light, it's vibrating at right angles to your line of sights, if that vibration rotates, the wave is said to be elliptically polarized. If it rotates clockwise, the polarization is called right-handed. Counterclockwise, it's left-handed. I know it's a dumb designation. Anyway, by varying between the two kinds of polarization, you could transmit information. A little right polarization, and that's a zero. A little left and it's a one. Follow. It's perfectly possible. We have amplitude modulation and frequency modulation, but our civilization by convention ordinarily just doesn't do polarization modulation. So, just to note, like in that tiny little paragraph, he really has a nice explanation for phase modulation. I'm really impressed by that. Like, I would have had an 8 minute video with like diagrams everywhere like this is why I'm not a science communicator. It turns out Carl Sean are pretty good at that. Um, anyway, they look at the polarization of light and they find thousands of pages of binary with this detailed instructions on building a machine and because the message is transmitted constantly and you know the earth is rotating in order to get the full message the world has to collaborate. Russia has to collect data and put it into the pile and America collects data and Japan collects data and we get like a full map of the globe so we can get every piece of information. Okay, so part two, the machine. The message was decoded and revealed to be very specific instructions for building a machine. The world builds it. So Wikipedia says the theme of this novel is contact between humans and more technologically advanced extraterrestrial life forms, which is kind of like saying the theme of Moby Dick is a guy who goes fishing. Like that's the plot of the book. I'm not an English teacher, but aren't plot and theme two different things? One of the themes is science versus religion or perhaps like don't scientists have to believe in science and isn't that the same as religion? And is explored over hundreds of pages, forcing the reader to relive 10th grade. You know, when people's brains first turn on and they suddenly develop these weak ass arguments about the existence or non-existence of God and like we'll get there, but I first read this book in high school and I remember thinking it was fine, but like boy, as an adult, I just don't have the patience for these types of discussions anymore. I really struggled through this. I think I did end up appreciating it. I appreciated a lot of the stuff, especially after watching the movie, but like this was my punishment for saying I was gonna do a thing before I did the thing. Like I shouldn't promise to do a video on a thing unless I've already done the thing because who boy, I don't think I would have finished this otherwise. But I mean, it was fine. Like three out of five stars. It was fine. The second theme I found interesting and it was like technology versus humanity. This theme shows up in a couple of different ways. One of the ways is one of the main characters, Palmer Joss, who's played by Matthew McConna in the movie. He's like a religious dude who's made his name kind of claiming that technology has destroyed our humanity. It's removed us from each other. And it's just like we used to rely on each other, but now we worship. This book was written in the 80s, so like laser discs and Atari and stuff. What has science really done for us? he declined. Are we really happier? I don't mean just holographic receivers and seedless grapes. Are we fundamentally happier? Or do the scientists bribe us with toys, with technological trinkets while they undermine our faith? And it's just like vaccines, my dude. Telecommunication, gene therapy for plants so we can grow food and stuff. I just This book was written in 1985 and we didn't even have

### [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=1200s) Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00)

like widespread cell phone use yet. So this guy Palmer Jos is just walking around pissed that human beings are doing cocaine and watching ALF now. He doesn't even have Instagram to yell at it. It's very silly. He's just one of those guys who's like, "We used to be a country and now all we have are garish patterns and velvet ponytails. " classic lament of the religious person to be like everything was better in the way back. How embarrassing. But to be fair, Carl Sean was not a traditionally religious person. Like he was one of those like I'm spiritual like I think like a lot of scientists are. And these religious characters are kind of the cartoons that Sean wrote. like it's a cartoony version of a religious person for the book reasons. And then the message happens and everyone learns that it is instructions to build machine and Palmer Jos becomes like the president's spiritual adviser because he's like technology is bad and there's a message from space and like there's religious implications but like whatever. The world decides to collaborate and build the machine and this was my favorite section of the book. So this is like the early 1980s, right, in the book and it's like the height of the Cold War and you have like America and the Western block and they love capitalism and you have Russia and the Eastern block and they love communism and the tensions are high and the bombs are being built and like war is on the precipice at all times and everyone's really nervous. But then they have like a group project. They have this group project like there's a threat from space. And so now it's like well we should all probably get together and discuss this. So the world governments are like should we build it? If we build it what do we do with it? And they have a very human view of this like invitation because that's what it is, right? Aliens have sent instructions. That is an invitation. So, some of them are like, "This is a Trojan horse. " Imagine if I decided to explain what a Trojan horse was. Like, sometimes I don't know when to stop being like, "Some people think it's a doomsday machine. Like, we're going to build it and everything on Earth will explode. " There's one really interesting one. Let me read it to you. So, this is one of the Russian guys that's friends with Dr. Arowway in the book. He says, "Arowway, don't you understand? I'm amazed you don't see it. The Earth is a ghetto. " Yes, a ghetto. All human beings are trapped here. We have heard vaguely that there are big cities out there beyond the ghetto with broad boulevards filled with drosskis and beautiful perfumed women and furs. But the cities are too far away and we are too poor ever to go there, even the richest of us. Anyway, we know they don't want us. That's why they left us in this pathetic little village in the first place. And now along comes an invitation. Fancy, elegant. They have sent us an engraved card on an empty drosski. We are to send five villagers and the drosski will carry them to who knows Warsaw or Moscow, maybe even Paris. Of course, some are tempted to go. There will always be people who are flattered by the invitation or who think that is a way to escape our shabby village. And what do you think will happen when we get there? Do you think the Grand Duke will have us to dinner? Will the president of the academy ask us interesting questions about our daily life and our filthy shuttle? Do you imagine the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan will engage us in learn discourse on comparative religion? No, we will gawk at the big city and they will laugh at us behind their hands. They will exhibit us to the curious. The more backward we are, the better they'll feel and the more reassured they'll be. It's a quota system. Every few centuries, five of us get to spend a weekend on Vega, have pity on the provincials, and make sure that they know who their bettererss are. I just think it's a very human centric version of like politics between neighboring countries in the 20th century. That's how people would see an invitation where the scientists are kind of like, well, they could kill us at any moment. What we do doesn't matter. They've invited us. It would be rude not to respond. And in the book, that scientific opinion convinces everyone to be like, okay, we'll all work together. We will build this device. And I again thought this was the most interesting part of the book. The group project provides the opportunity for all of these countries to work together. And because they all have access to the document, multiple countries decide to build machine. America builds one, Japan builds one, Russia build builds one, but all of the work is being done by random contractors. So like some random Florida company is building the same component three times and sending it out. And something amazing happens. Like everyone's so focused on this effort that like world peace, nuclear proliferation is down. Everyone's working together. And in the book, this

### [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=1500s) Segment 6 (25:00 - 30:00)

happens over 12 years, which is very interesting. Carl Sean like promotes this optimistic view of the future where the world has to work on this project. So, as a result, like everything gets better all across the world. Technology brings everyone together. Tying it into the theme of humanity versus technology. Well, maybe technology is the thing that could push us. like this goal of building the machine forces everyone to work together and work towards this goal. They put aside country lines. They put aside like these dollar amounts. They're like, "Who cares? It cost a trillion dollars. We'll just do it. Everyone has jobs now. Like world peace happens. The technology that they're seeing is then applied because it takes 12 years to other fields and the lives of everyday people are improved because they're working on building this machine. It happens over 12 years. The normal everyday people who aren't scientists, who aren't involved in like radio astrophysics see their lives get better because they are building a machine. And I maintain that it's really interesting. The idea is really interesting, but like oh my god, like 30% of this book is just hyper realistic discussions between Miss American president and her adviserss and her religious spiritual adviserss and the scientists trying to explain what prime numbers are and talking about like how Russia just imagine you hear about a book like contact and Wikipedia tells you the theme is contact between humans and intelligent life and it's written by a scientist so oh my goodness it's going to be so good and then it's just politics just geopolitical interests and how that affects the idea that aliens exist I've been watching a bunch of classic movies I've missed and like re-watching ones I watched one time when I was a kid and I recently rewatched watched the original Star Wars trilogy. I'm not a Star Wars guy, but I did enjoy them a lot more than I did the first time. They were pretty good. Hot take Star Wars fun movies. But this book specifically makes me think of those people who really like Star Wars and they watched it in the movie theater in the 70s and the 80s and they're waiting for the prequels to come out and they're like, "Oh my god, there's so much in this universe. What could possibly be the next story? I'm so excited. " And then they go watch the prequels and it's just like Senate negotiations over trade wars for like 10 hours and it's like I can see why that's the story but also it just sucks that that's the story. Like realistically of course that would be the story but like supposed to be a movie man. I'm not a Star Wars person. Am I insulting the Star Wars people by saying the prequels are boring or like because I feel like opinions have changed since the last three movies came out? I should I become a Star Wars person? Let me know in the comments below. Anyway, the idea that it takes a long time to build this machine, the group project forces the world into peace. People become citizens of Earth rather than citizens of their respective countries is a very interesting idea. Like there's just a very optimistic version of the future where this brings everyone together and because they work together they build these new technologies which improves the lives of all the people all because they got a message from the stars like it's a very like look at how science could positively impact the world type discussion and I thought this was the best part of the book one thing that I thought was really good was that he describes the building of the machine and like how the aliens ensured that there were so many tests like they would give an instruction to build something and then there would be like test after test. And I really liked that like the aliens assume we're kind of dumb and so we get very simple stepby-step instructions. And I also really liked that it's very vague. Like we're reading the book, we don't get instructions on how to build a machine. I think it's really important when you're writing sci-fi not to give too much detail because if you on how the machine is supposed to go through a wormhole or whatever, like my physics brain starts being like, well, that doesn't make sense. And so, it was like the perfect big description without going too in the weeds. I really enjoyed this part of the book. Part three, the galaxy. Five humans load up into the machine and have a religious experience traveling the galaxy, but come back with little evidence to convince the rest of the humans. So, I briefly mentioned earlier the theme of religion versus science and like that's just kind of the whole book that that's the theme of the book. Our main

### [30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=1800s) Segment 7 (30:00 - 35:00)

character, Ellie Airway, kind of sees this come up in her life when she's a child. She has that classic experience where she's forced to go to Sunday school and she asks so many questions that she gets kicked out. Um, I know that this is a very common story that atheists tell like every atheist, you know, is like, I once stumped all the adults with my super good questions about religion and I just I feel like religious people are not dumb dums. I don't think sevenyear-olds are going around stumping lifelong religious people who are also professional teachers of religion to children. I feel like these atheist children are just disrupting the class. Like they're being rude. They're being annoying and so they get kicked out of the class for breaking the rules. And for some reason, the little atheist children like put a little star and they're like, "See, that was the first time I bested everyone with my atheism. " And it's like, "Well, no, you didn't stump the teacher. She's not less religious now. She's just annoyed that you kept disrupting the class. " This also happens to Ellie again, and it's kind of like supposed to match the experience when she's, I think, in middle school. She gets a math teacher and she asks a bunch of math questions and the teacher can't answer them at the appropriate level and so she goes to the library to learn all the math and she's like, "Haha, sometimes you can find the answers. " But anyway, if you imagine a story from like an atheist, like a classic atheist confrontation with a religious person story that they all have. They're all in the book. So, just another example, Palmer Joss takes Ellie to the Smithsonian in DC and they go see Fukco Pendulum and he's like, I bet you have to have faith that the pendulum's not going to hit you in the face. See, science is a religion. [snorts] And it's just that that's not faith. That's the conservation of energy. I the issue is that Carl Sean the man he's a traditionally not religious person like he's I think he has had so many words about his religion but I don't want to put words in his mouth but I think based on what I've read of him his v version of religion is like not atheist but like agnostic spiritual like I need evidence you know And because that is his religion, he's just writing every single straw man religious argument that you've ever heard. And it's it's very cringy to read, especially when it happens over and over. To be fair to Carl Sean though, these arguments from religious people in his book that he's written cartoony straw man versions of are the actual arguments that you hear from religious people. And maybe if they had better arguments for being religious, Carl Sean would have put those in the book. I've tried to be really nice. Let me just have that one. Okay. under the theme of religion versus science is also the theme of like parenthood and you can see why that's kind of the same thing because like western religions are a lot of like God the father you know but Ellie has these issues with her childhood and her parents like her mom is not supportive of her little science journey and her dad is like I love science we'll do science together and then he dies and she marries this dude her stepfather who's like a math professor or a science professor and he also doesn't think women can do science. So, she's kind of like she lost the only parent that believed in her and she goes on to do these amazing things and she's like rude to her mom. It's like the whole thing. And then at the end when she meets the aliens, spoilers, they take the shape of her dead father. So, it's like God, father, parenthood and stuff. There's this moment in the book where Ellie, Dr. airway. She's made this lifechanging, not life-changing, earthchanging, history shattering discovery that aliens exist and they want to talk to us, right? Probably the most important thing that any human would ever do. Okay? Like for like the history timeline, she has done this, right? She through her discovery inspired the world to build a machine to work together. She caused world peace. They've built a machine. She's on the machine. She's going to be the first person to make contact. This is the most important person who's ever existed. That is her. That is what she has done. And she's on the ship and all of these things have happened. And she she's going to meet aliens, right?

### [35:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=2100s) Segment 8 (35:00 - 40:00)

— Profoundly impactful moment for humanity, for the history of history. — The end. Can you see? This is part three. The galaxy. This is the end. She says she wished she had a child. It was her last thought before the walls flickered and became transparent. And it seemed the earth opened up and swallowed her. And I just I like children. Children are great. And I know that there are people who their only thing in the world is to want to have children. And if one of those people was on a ship going to meet aliens, I bet they would say that. But Ellieowway has never shown a thought about that. Like there's a moment where one of her boyfriends is like, "We should have a child. " And she's like, "No, because I love science. I got to do science. " And that's the only time it comes up. Like her character is not about parenthood. But for some reason, Carl Sean thought that that's what she would say in that moment. Her whole life, her entire life, her only goal had been to find aliens. She was on a ship about to meet them. and she's like, "Oh, I wish I had kids. " Like, [snorts] you know how sometimes when a man writes a book and the main character is a woman, you can just really tell the whole time? This book is a real she breasted bubbly down the stairs situation. It never comes up again, by the way. Oh, I wish I had a kid. Never comes up again. There's a whole third of the book left. Like she doesn't end the book like pregnant and staring at the stars and being like we did it. It never comes up again. He was just like that's what a woman would think, right? Ew. I didn't like Carl Sean says that the only thing Ellie Arrowway is interested in is finding aliens, right? Her career. It's all she talks about. When we are inside her head for all of these pages, the only thing she's thinking about is boning her co-workers. Like, which of her colleagues she wants to have sex with? Which of her colleagues haven't hit on her yet, but man, does she want them to? Which of her colleagues have hit on her? like she spent spends her life trying to find aliens and she gets a signal from aliens and the government comes down to sea and the right away she's just like this government guy is so cute. Oh my god, this is so exciting. I can't believe how is our relationship going to work and it's like babe you just found aliens. What? It's so unprofessional and weird and rude and like it's almost predator behavior because she is like high up in her career, right? She is the project leader and she's like thinking these gross l thoughts about every man that enters. It's really gross. It's really weird. If you made a little pie chart of contact by Carl Sean, like 30% would be like geopolitics, like Russia versus America, communism versus capitalism, like oh my goodness. 60% would be like religious arguments, straw men versions of religious people getting bested by a high school scientist. And the other 10% would just be the X-rated thoughts of Ellie Arrowway as any man walks into her line of sight. It's so inappropriate. It's so bad. Okay. Um I'm going to read you the worst one. So Drumlin. Okay. So the worst one in my opinion. I'm going to read it to you. So Drumlin is kind of her PhD adviser. He um he didn't like that she wanted to focus on like SETI research and so she was under someone else and then like he became in charge of the NSF and he tried to shut down her projects and then once she found aliens he like tried to take it over and he's originally supposed to go on the ship. He's also in the movie. He's this guy in the movie and then there's a terrorist attack in the book and the movie and in the book the terrorist attack is going to blow up the ship and he sees a guy with a bomb and so Drumlin turns around and like jumps on top of Ellie to protect her and he saves her life and this is what Ellie thinks. Suddenly Drumlin was in the air flying. Everyone else seemed to be flying too. It reminded her of the tornado that had carried Dorothy to Oz as in a slow motion film. Drumline careened toward her, arms outstretched, knocked her roughly to the ground. After all these years, she thought. Was this his notion of a sexual overachure? He had a lot to learn. The man is dead, Ellie. He saved your life. What? This just that's what I mean. Like you can tell a man wrote this book. Okay, just one more. Do you know at the start of Back to the Future, like with when the credits are rolling, you see like Doc's workshop and you see all of it, the little machines he's built like make his day easier so he can focus on

### [40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=2400s) Segment 9 (40:00 - 45:00)

science. Like he has a little breakfast making machine and stuff. You know what I'm talking about? And that's kind of like a show don't tell of like this character who you're about to see is so focused on science. They're so smart and good at science that they don't want to worry about all those daily life stuff. In this book, Ellie Arrowway builds a nail painting machine so she can save time. I mean, it's just like she wouldn't paint her nails. She just didn't [snorts] She's so smart. She built a device to paint her nails. I hate it. like she's literally got aliens on the phone and she's like, "Well, I don't want to have to paint my nails. I guess I'll use the machine to paint my nails. " I'm going to say something really, really harsh. But I think like a year ago, I did a review on this book called Love Theoretically. Oh, it's orange. It's on my bookshelf. Romance novel where a theoretical physicist falls in love with an experimental physicist. Oh my god. And this book, it reminded me a lot of that book. There's even a chapter called harmonic motion. He also does the thing where every chapter is called like coherent light, super symmetry and stuff. There's a chapter called harmonic motion, but it's not the one where she has sex with anybody. It's the one where her and Palmer Joss go look at the pendulums. Like, it does make sense. Like Carl Sean at least knows what the physics words means. He could have used a tighter edit. That's all I'm saying. I mean, I do like Carl Sean. I think he was a good science communicator. I think there's a lot of really interesting sci-fi stuff in this book, but I think maybe because he was so famous, people did not give him enough feedback, which would have made this book a lot better. There's one sentence in this book that makes me think it wasn't edited at all. Like the whole time we're kind of in Ellie's head and then there's this sentence where she's like listening to the radio waves as you do. You can't. Your ears aren't telescopes, but it's fine. Ellie had to take care that TDM did not engulf her. Her co-workers were pleasant enough, but even apart from the impropriety of a close personal relationship with a nominal subordinate, she did not find herself tempted into any real intimacies. So the only thing keeping her from sexually harassing her students was that she wasn't interested in any of them which is just that's bad Carl Sean but anyway there had been a few brief torid but fundamentally casual relationships with local men unconnected to the Argus project in this area of her life too a kind of unwe elacitude had settled over her and then this happens she sat down before one of the consoles and plugged in the earphones. It was futile, she knew, a conceit to think that she, listening on one or two channels, would detect a pattern when the vast computer system monitoring a billion channels had not. But it gave her a modest illusion of utility. She leaned back, eyes half closed, an almost dreamy expression enveloping the contours of her face. And then the next sentence, she's really quite lovely. The technician permitted himself to think. I don't have a lot to say about that. I just find it really interesting that like the whole book is like inside Ellie's head, her thoughts, and then randomly, because the author wants us to know that she's hot, we leave her head and we go to some random technician's head just for one sentence. Like, we don't know who that guy is. Isn't that weird? Isn't that really weird? I mean, it's it has nothing about the book. It's just that sentence was really weird. Why didn't anyone catch that? Is that normal? I did really like the book. I don't want to critique it too much, but it's just like he's got too much going on. Like he wants all this representation. Like the president is a woman, Ellie is a woman, but like he doesn't really write characters that seem like women and he's got a whole subplot in here about super symmetry. There's a Muslim Nigerian theoretical physicist who smooshes quantum mechanics and relativity together. And super symmetry happened in that 12-year period where they're building the machine. And it's like there's too much happening. there's not enough time to dedicate time to any of those stories. So, they just seem kind of shoehorned in like which makes all of them a little less interesting, a little less valuable. There are too many quotes from books like he's like here's Kafka, here's Kant, here's oid, here's Shakespeare, here's a bunch of old religious texts and it's like we get it, dude. You read books. It's there's too much happening. Maybe I'm criticizing the person who took his money and pretended to edit this because like you should have just taken out a bunch of the quotes from books. Like you don't quote better books inside your book because then people just want to go read that book. I did like it though. I gave it three out of five stars. It was good.

### [45:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=2700s) Segment 10 (45:00 - 50:00)

Let's get back to the book. So the big conceit of the book, it happens at the very end. Part three, the galaxy. So the character of Ellie in the book, she's like the kind of spiritual like space is big. I like to feel small. Like there's a lot of stuff out there. We don't know the answers. That kind of religious, right? And she's had all these conversations with all these religious people. And she's told Palmer Jos like, "I'm an incredibly spiritual person. I just don't believe in like the religions of Earth. There's just no evidence of that. " Right? And then she goes to space. Five of them together. They get in the machine, right? and they all have these huge religious experience with aliens. Like they all split apart and they all see an alien that takes the shape of someone they're estranged from either in like life or like life circumstance. Like someone sees their granddaughter who they're not allowed to see. Someone sees their dead husband. Ellie, of course, sees her father and they all have these conversations with their daddy aliens who are like, "Space is big, you know, like these highways, these intergalactic highways. We didn't build these. Someone's out there taking care of us. " And like, "Man, you guys should be good little humans. " And they go back and they're like, "Whoa, there was a malfunction. No time has passed. All the devices we took to record all this information don't have any data. " What? The government then decides like, "So, you scammed us. This was a scam. We don't believe you. You don't you didn't get any data. You call yourself a scientist. Why are we supposed to believe that you talked to aliens? Oh my god, I can't believe we fell for this. " So Ellie at the end, she's in the like the congressional hearing with the US government and they're like, "You scammed us out of cash. " And she's like, "I don't have any evidence. I guess you'll just have to take it on faith. " Mic drop. Oh my god. That's what the book was about. And Ellie has to convince the world that she had this experience even though she doesn't have any proof. You get it? Do you get it? Science is like a religion. Except this doesn't make any sense. That — Four. The ending of the book. It just doesn't make any sense. Like we read the book, it was very long. We read it. In this book, Eliero receives the message from a point source in Vega. Sending prime numbers. This message was confirmed by astrophysicists all over the world. Tons of them They looked at the noise in the prime numbers and they got video images of Hitler. And there was an interesting thing in the book that I'm not sure if this is true, but it was in the book and I thought it was a really cool part of the book, but in the book, the president is saying, "We don't even have this video footage of Hitler at the Olympic Games. Like, we have images of it. We've written down what part of his speech is, but we don't have it. And they've sent us back the full recording. They sent more information than like we had saved as human beings, right? And then also in the message there's instructions on how to build a machine. In the book it takes 12 years, right? So the whole world sees this message. They print coffee table books containing the message from the aliens. Just random normal people have the message in their homes from the aliens, right? It's just that there's no way to fake that. Every single astronomer on Earth received a message from a point source in Vega just spitting out prime numbers. Like every single human on Earth benefits, experiences those benefits from them building the machine. Like in 12 years, technology is vastly improved. There's world peace. You're still with me, right? In the text of the book, the entire world spends 12 years and trillions of dollars following the Galactic IKEA pamphlet to build the machine. The entire world experiences this. All of their lives are improved. Everyone benefits from the messages from the alien. There's actually a scene in this book that I thought was really fun where Sean is talking about how the aliens probably think we're dumb dums. So, they're sending all these steps and one of the steps has humans like assemble a bunch of liquids and metals and stuff in like an Olympicsized swimming pool vat. And they do it, they follow the steps, and in the book he describes it as like the most humanlike non-living object. Like the goo comes to life, pulls itself out of the swimming pool, and then starts doing some of the engineering steps that the humans don't understand. I thought that was

### [50:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=3000s) Segment 11 (50:00 - 55:00)

really fun. This would have been on the news. All the engineers working on that would have seen this goo engineer doing a thing. They saw it with their eyes, right? So for 12 years, everyone on Earth knows aliens exist. They get new technologies from the alien message. World peace. Humanity. Everyone's earthlings now. We all working together. Five people go meet the aliens. forgot to take a picture and now they're like, "So, you scammed us all. None of this happened. " It doesn't make any sense. Even if they they didn't believe that those people met aliens, they all saw footage of the goo engineer. Do you know what I mean? Like, it just it doesn't make sense that this is the ending. I understand Carl Sean for some reason wanted this big aha moment of like see she has to take people on faith too now or something but like they literally got contacted by aliens. You can't fake that to the world. It just it makes no sense that this is the ending after 12 years of new technologies. They're like rude you lied to us. you h you somehow sent a signal from Vega. It just it makes no sense that people suddenly wouldn't believe in the aliens like they all got the message. So, um part five, the movie. So, the ending of this book, it makes no sense. It's complete nonsense. Like, it's shocking that this somehow was printed this way because like the ending doesn't make any sense. 12 years. Anyway, obviously if you're going to make it into a movie, you're gonna want to fix that part. You're gonna want it to make sense. Um, so I think they made a lot of changes solely because they wanted to make sure the ending of the movie makes sense. I don't think they did that successfully, but like first, they kill Ellie's mom. So Ellie's just got her dad and he's like, "I sure do support you listening to the radio. " CQ, this is W9 GFO here. Come back. — And they make Ellie absolutely obsessed with like contacting other people far away and then eventually trying to contact aliens and stuff. And Zmechus, who I think is great, by the way, I also like this movie. I'm gonna talk it, but I think it's good. I think Zmechus is good at making movies. He does do this thing where it's like it's symmetry, it rhymes, which is annoying. — Small moves, Ellie. Small moves. — Pensacola, Florida. — One down. — AAM's razor. You've ever heard of it? — Are you familiar with the scientific precept known as AAM's razor? — Seems like an awful waste of space. — Be Seems like an awful waste of space. — But also, I don't believe that an 8-year-old with a ham radio license would forget what Saturn is called. — I'll give you a hint. Hula hoops. — Saturn. Can we talk to Saturn? — Just saying. They change her character from being like spiritual and the universe is my god type of way like she is in the book to being like a staunch atheist which produces like even cringier discussions between her and the religious people who she's kind of just making fun of the whole movie. — How do you know you're not deluding yourself? — What if science simply revealed that he never existed in the first place? — I just I kept asking all these really annoying questions like a all right then where did Mr. Hane come from? And uh pretty soon they called my dad and they asked him if he wouldn't mind just keeping me home. Sometimes we just have to accept it as God's will. — Should have kept some medicine in the downstairs bathroom. — Wait, I was going to say it's an adventure. — Come on. It's like you're saying that science killed God. — The fact of the matter is we don't even know whether they believe in God. — This is nuts. Excuse me. — And then you have Matthew McConna acting like Charlie from Santa Claus. — Did you love your father? — What? — Your dad. Did you love him? — Yes, very much. — Prove it. Have you ever seen a million dollars? — No. — Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. — They just end that scene there. Like that was a good argument. Have you ever seen a million dollars and then Jodie Foster is just being like the edgiest edgy edge lord atheist to ever exist? Like this comes up because in the selection process Palmer Joss is like on the committee to decide one person gets to go. They change it to one person in the movie, I think, because it's easier not to believe one person than five people who agree that the thing happened to them. But Palmer Joss asks her if she believes in God. And like she can't even lie to go to space. — Do you believe in God

### [55:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=3300s) Segment 12 (55:00 - 60:00)

— Dr. — It's like she can't even lie about it to go to space. Drumlin lies about it. He gets to go to space, but then he gets murdered in the terrorist attack. 95% of the world's population believes in a supreme being in one form or another. — I'm really sorry, but even in 1997 when this movie came out, there's no way 95% of people that said they believed in God. That's crazy. 95% of people can't agree on anything. They also changed the way the message is delivered. Um I think to make it easier to explain to non-scientific audiences like they just have a graphical thing that the billionaire does. I do think this is a shortcoming of the film because like you had Carl Sean, he was sick during the filming, but he was answering questions and like he explained polarization in like two seconds in the book. Just do it in the movie. Like people like learning things. In the movie, they have like the crazy billionaire eccentric genius dude tell Ellie how to read the message. And this helps bolster the ending because you have Hades, this guy who wants to be a senator, so he wants to prove that the aliens aren't real, so he can blame communists or something. You have him being like, "Well, this billionaire gave you the answer to the message. Maybe he created the message. Maybe he's treating me like a pawn. Maybe you're a dumbass, Ellie. Even though it still doesn't make sense. " They also changed the timeline. So in the book it's like they get the message 12 years of like world governments collaborating building the machine technology improves every pe every person every normal everyday person experiences a positive effect of whoa aliens exist in the movie they shrink it down to like message machine maybe like 18 months two years I mean Bill Clinton in the movie is president the whole time to make me look at his stupid face — the director Robert Zmechus concentrates on the drama and doesn't let the special effects get in the way except for a couple of awkward scenes where he tries to convince us that President Clinton is part of the cast. Well, that worked as a running gag in Zmechus' Forest Gump. But here, it's a distraction in an otherwise really fine movie. — But because they condense it down, there's not enough time for the message and the machine itself to have that big enough effect on the world. So, you see it on the news in the background, but normal everyday people in the movie might not think that it's real. So, at the end when Ellie has to be in front of the Senate committee or whatever and she's like, "Well, you just have to believe me. " I feel like it's more believable that maybe people would be like, "I never saw any evidence of aliens. " Do you know what I mean? And then, like I said, you have Hades at the end of the movie. He's like very invested in making Ellie look like a dumbass so that he can do like a whole new red scare thing and be like, "Communists are bad and stuff. " So, he's got a vested interest in making sure people don't think the story is true, which like gives you a reason for this sudden heels turn at the end of the book and be like, even though we all saw the message, it's fake, right? I don't know. That's how you get to the ending. They try to frame Ellie or the billionaire guy and she's just a pawn for creating a fake message. I think at the end of the movie, you're supposed to be like, whoa, was it real or was it a dream? Oh my god. Look, Ellie has faith in herself now. And I just Is science a religion? Whoa. Science is like a religion. But it's not really because then at the very end, Angela Basset tells Hades that — what interests me is that it recorded approximately 18 hours of it. — That is interesting, isn't it? So, like in the movie, it's canon that her whole thing actually happened. But for some reason, that information doesn't go out to the public and they don't even tell Ellie that. It's the movie also makes no sense. The movie tried to fix it and in effect removed all of the interesting things from the book. Even though I still like the movie, the movie is still good. It's still fine. It's just the ending doesn't make any sense. Like, what do you mean? You can't fake a message from a point source in Vega. It makes no sense. What I think they should have done if they wanted Ellie to be like, "Wow, that was a religious experience. I have religion now. " Is they kind of did it, but what they should have done is have Ellie go meet the aliens and the aliens not tell her anything. Just be like, "No, this is a process. Like, there's even bigger, better, daddier aliens who built these intergalactic highways and we don't know anything about them. " And then Ellie comes back to Earth and she's like, "Aliens are real. Space is big, but guess what? There's still questions that need answers. Like, your religion still has meaning. " And isn't it exciting that the more we learn, the more questions we have? And like, that would be the ending of like religion can still coexist with science. Isn't that

### [1:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=3600s) Segment 13 (60:00 - 65:00)

great? But instead, they just made her a liar. It's weird. I also don't like at the end of the movie that the dad is like CGI. You can see where his career is going with this bad CGI. I just they had the actor. He was there. Surely they just put his face where his face is. I feel like when I complain about things, people think I hate them, but like I really did like the book and I also movie. There's a lot of good stuff here. I think the book was better as like a sci-fi. Like if you're looking for sci-fi that you want to like think about, the book was way better than the movie. The movie seemed more like just Ellie's personal journey into being like, "Wow, religion can be cool, I guess, which is fine, but I'm more of a sci-fi guy, so I would rather read the book. " But I really liked the movie. Zmechas did a great job. There's this famous scene in the movie. I you I hate kids in movies. Like kids in real life are great. I love kids. Kids are great. Kids in movies are usually bad. I feel like because like the type of child who is willing to stand silently on a set for eight hours and be yelled at by a director and cry on Q over and over again, they're going to be quite precocious. And so often child actors I feel don't seem like children or if they do seem like children, they're bad at acting. You know, — I told my dad that I didn't want him to go. — Daddy, don't go. Or even worse, you have directors who don't understand how children work. So like a 13-year-old will be told to act in a way that makes them seem like six, which is just really annoying. I don't think kids should be allowed to be in movies. Um Jenna Malone was a great child actor. She's great in this movie. She's perfect. 10 out of 10. And like she's still an actor. She's still a great actor. Even when they're good, it makes me feel bad. Like I just imagine them acting for their parents' love and their parents are like slightly offscreen like not even watching just like counting the money. It makes me sad. We should have Zmechus CGI all children into movies so that child actors don't exist. I really liked Roblo and Matthew McConna is the gross religious guy. Like Rob Low has this tiny role as Rankin, who's like a beefier character in the book, but he's just so good at being the worst. Just like the worst type of guy. — This is yet another example of science intruding into matters of faith. Now they will have a set of places. — He's just so good at being like the worst, like the obviously phony garbage TV preacher type guy. And then you have Matthew McConna who's just very good at being like the smoothtalking handsome guy who thinks he's better than you. Like look at this scarf. — But our goal is one and the same. Pursuit of truth. I for one believe her. — He's so good at this movie. No notes. No notes on being this type of guy. Matthew McConnA has that nailed down. I mentioned this earlier, but like I don't want to see Bill Clinton ever. And I feel like his presence in this movie really ages it, but also makes it worse. In the book, there was a female president. I get that it's a fantasy to have a female president, but like this is a sci-fi movie. You have Angela Basset right there. A big problem with this movie is a problem with a lot of Angela Basset movies and that they just waste their Angela Basset. Like, you're already paying her. She's there. Give her more lines. Give her more screen time. I always, always want to see more Angela Basset. You made me look at Bill Clinton when I could have been looking at Angela Basset. Like, come on. I might get in copyright trouble for this, but like, just for fun, I'm going to play every single scene in this movie where two women talk to each other. In a movie where the lead character discovers a signal from aliens, I think it's just gonna be important and informative for us to watch every single scene in this movie where two women talk to each other. And promise you'll stick around. Promise you'll stay with me until it's over and then we can talk about them. — Is exchange for technology rights. Different nations are being compensated in different I believe dress. — That was it. That was all of them. She gets to talk to the president's aid, Angela Basset, and all she has to say is like, "Where could I get a great dress to seduce this scarfwearing preacher? " [sighs and gasps] That's it. I do love Jodie Foster, though. She

### [1:05:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=3900s) Segment 14 (65:00 - 70:00)

She's acting her ass off in this movie. She's great. She nailed it. — The poem so beautiful. — We know why we're all here. Part six. Our ears are not telescopes. You cannot hear radio waves. What are we doing in this movie, guys? What is going on? I know Sean was sick. He was sick when this movie was being filmed. But like, you could have asked him a question. Did he know that every single scientist character was going to spend 90% of their screen time listening to signals during this movie? In the book, it's kind of like a quirky gag that Ellie listens to the radio data and it's like a reminder of her childhood of like listening to ham radio. But in the movie, it is taken so deadly serious. — I think it's you listen to most people don't do that anymore. This woman who is the project manager and not in any way responsible for data collection somehow has the time to drive out to where the telescopes physically are and plug in headphones and listen to the radio signals. Doesn't she has a job to do? She should be analyzing the data like this is how she spends all her time. What? like they get the message from the aliens. The computer is plotting the message in a frequency versus time plot in real time. The computer is showing them the data and recording that data, right? And yet they're just running around trying to find a boom box to plug in so they can also listen to it. They already have the signal. They're looking at it. Why would they need to listen? It doesn't make sense. They're not recording the Talk to me guys. Partly polarized set of moving pulses amplitude modulated system signal across the board. What's the frequency? 4. 46 23 GHz. Strong sucker too. — I got it. I got it. Let me hear it. — Just imagine that you're a professional astrophysicist and you wrote a proposal to get observing time at the VA, right? First of all, you probably don't even get to go. It's like there are professional scientists and engineers who work at the VA and they are responsible for that machine. It's very expensive. They're not going to let some random physicist go and start pushing buttons. Ellie's a project manager, but she doesn't have to be physically on site. You don't need to look at the data real time when it's coming in. And like most of the time, you write a proposal with target candidates listed, right? And then 18 months later, you're assigned some time and you're communicating with the staff engineers. You send them the coordinates of the objects you want and then like months later they'll send you the data. It's probably already been reduced a little bit. They're probably not even sending you the raw data. You're certainly not flying to New Mexico to plug headphones into a device and listen to raw unanalyzed radio signals. It doesn't make any sense. It's ridiculous. It's hilarious. — We're a joke to them. They want us out. — Carl Sean would have known this was very silly. Was he making like a joke or something? Was it a joke? It was funny. In this movie, there's a character called Kent Clark. Get it? — Kent. Kent Clark. Hey. He's played by um Blackhawk Down and he's blind. He's a blind professional astrophysicist and I love to see that. Great representation, you know. it. I actually worked at an observatory at UK and I did like the um the observing nights for like the Astro 101 classes and it was required for your grade. So, we had a ton of accommodations to help people who like couldn't do certain things because like to look into the eyepiece, you had to climb a step ladder and also look down and see. So, like if you had mobility issues or you couldn't see very well, we had accommodations set up, right? Like one thing we could do is connect a computer and so if you couldn't get up the steps to look through the eyepiece, you could look on the computer and if you couldn't see very well, we could like blow up the image and make it huge. If you were color blind, we could like invert the color map or something. Or if you just were completely blind and you could not see, we had these like giant placards of like topographical images that you could

### [1:10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=4200s) Segment 15 (70:00 - 75:00)

feel the texture of an image. So like if you were blind, you could still observe something. And if you are blind, you can still be a professional astrophysicist. Of course you can. But what we would never do if someone came to the telescope and they were like, "Oh, I actually can't see. " We certainly would never play the screeching raw data files from a radio telescope into their ears. We wouldn't do that because no one would ever do that. Like I love to see Kent Clark in this movie. Like it is great to like they don't it's not a big deal that he's blind. He's just an astrophysicist who is blind and that's great. That's great to see. But it's a little weird. It's a little weird that they make it seem like because he's blind he he's better at being an astrophysicist because he has superhuman hearing for listening to raw radio telescope data. harmonic. — Bingo. Lot more here, folks. — I mean, of course, all of these astrophysicists, for some reason, are listening to raw radio data with their ears instead of looking at any of the numerous computer screens that are analyzing the data in real time and giving them information. But like when Kent Clark enters the room, they're like, "Oh, I'm so glad you're here. " and they hand him the headphones and he's like, "Yeah, it's — um we could use some help with the spectrum analysis. " — It's like great, now you can do your super analysis with your extraordinary ears. It's weird. — I get you the headsets. — It's embarrassing a little bit. I do know that Kent Clark, the blind astrophysicist in the movie Contact, is in fact based on a real life human person, a blind astrophysicist who was like the study project leader for like seven years. I know that is a thing. So Kent Colors was born prematurely in 1949. He wasn't breathing and at that time what they did was they would shove you in into an incubator with pure oxygen. And because that technology existed, Kent Colors lived a very full life. But as a result of that technology, he went completely legally blind. In 1980, Kent Colors becomes Dr. Kent Colors when he graduated from Berkeley with a PhD in astrophysics. And he got a job at SETI. He worked as the city director for quite a bit and the character in the movie was directly inspired by him and he was even going to play the role in the movie until they made it like an actual part and they had to hire an actor. Did Dr. Kent Colors use his superhuman hearing to be extra good at astrophysics? No. Kent Colors was super good at writing analysis scripts for data analysis. He wrote a bunch of algorithms that were able to pick up tiny pulsed signals inside huge noisy environments. So, you know, if you work for SETI, you're looking for like signs of alien life. So, like imagine you have data from a star and you think that star might have some planets orbiting it and on those planets there might be some sort of signals. Well, you would need a computer program to look at the big data file and within that file find tiny repeating signals. So what Dr. Kent Colors, famously a blind astrophysicist, was so good at doing was writing these analysis scripts to analyze data from telescopes in the traditional way of computers. — [snorts] — Um, uh, fun fact, some of these analysis scripts he wrote are, well, modern updated versions are still in use in like machine learning algorithms because if you think of like a machine learning tool that's going to look at a bunch of cells and pick out the cancerous cell, you're looking for a tiny little signal within this huge thing of noise. So like it's still relevant in other fields. And he was a very good astrophysicist, right? And like I think that's important. It's important to be like, hey, you can be totally blind and also very good at astrophysics. And Dr. Kent Colors was. And maybe I'm reading too much into it because I did read this interview where he was very proud of like his role in the movie even though he wasn't in the movie. So like, I don't know. But man, it's still so weird. Just like look at them rushing to find a freaking boom box while they also have the computer showing the data in real time. You would not look away from the computer for a second to go find a speaker to play the sound of the data like the government is there and they're

### [1:15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4_-7rwWjE&t=4500s) Segment 16 (75:00 - 78:00)

like why did you tell the Australians about the prime numbers and then Kent comes in and she's like oh god I'm so glad you're here we need you to do the spectral analysis you the headsets — headphones to do this spectral analysis here's the headset do some for analysis with your ears. Get a TV monitor. All right. Patch the recording into the image processor. — Patch the recording through the image processor. — You know what, Ellie? Maybe you need a crazy evil billionaire to tell you how to break the code because only just now the government is already on your door and you're like, "Oh, maybe we should use an image processor. The ears are perfect. We don't need anything else. " Like if you think it's ridiculous that Ellie Airway, random scientist, ends up in front of a congressional committee reporting on her experience, or I guess non-experience in a spaceship, well, let me tell you that it can and does happen in cases of extreme scientific fraud. Contact came out in 1985, and one year later, a single biology paper sparked such huge media attention, it was all over the national news. The Secret Service was called, and yeah, a congressional hearing was held. You can learn more about this event and watch footage from the hearings on the featurelength documentary 17 pages found only on my streaming service Nebula. The controversy discussed in this documentary has been called the scientific Watergate with repercussions that still affect how scientific misconduct cases are handled today. The series reconstructs events through archival news footage, congressional testimony, and new firsthand interviews. You can find the documentary 17 pages and all of my videos on Nebula ad free plus the occasional bonus video from me if you're into that. Find more information here or in one of the links in my bio. Okay. Thanks. Bye. — As surely as I'm speaking by the spirit of God. That is a word for a person right now. That is God penetrating your heart. IT'S BURNING ON THE INSIDE OF YOU and you NEED TO MAKE A VOW OF FAITH OF $1,000. OH, BOB, couldn't you say 25? No. — You can't make a $1,000 vow of faith. I'm saying in faith. So, we got people that don't have teenagers that have no hardly nothing going for them. Got enough faith to make a $1,000 vow and send little $5 here and $10 there as God begins to move like a whirlwind in their life because they don't have that old programming of religion. Well, this isn't the way we do it in my church. Forget your church. I'm talking about what God says. And if you want the kind of miracles THAT ARE IN THE BIBLE, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO DO WHAT GOD SAID to do. That's I'm talking about your money because your money is you. It's your blood. It's your sweat, your tears. It's driving down the freeways. It's going to work. It's believing. It's you. — Anyway, thanks for watching. This is part two of a threepart video series on, hey, look, we built a telescope in the backyard. I mean, I will look at the data in a couple months. There's a couple of videos I want to make first. Um, but we will definitely look at the data. I'm doing the thing again where I'm telling you I'm going to do a thing and I'm going to be really annoyed that I actually have to do it, but I'm going to do it because I got to look at the data. Um, but we're going to look at it in the traditional way by using a computer. But I mean like if you want to listen to it, we can listen to it. Like and subscribe if you want me to just play the raw data file.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/40055*