Burst 7 - Why interstellar space flight is hard.

Recorded: 30 September 2015

You won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big  it really is 

Released: 1 October 2015

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Paul Carr explains in simple terms why we can't just jump on a big spaceship and go explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, yada, yada. Sorry, but space is too big.

The script for this Burst

Henrietta Leavitt - Periods of 25 Variable Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud

Hubble's observation as viewed by Hubble.

Daniel Cartin - On the Maximum Sufficient Range of interstellar Vessels

The New Horizons Mission

NASA - The Rocket Equation

Music - Jason Robinson.

The spoken content of the Wow! Signal is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. Music is presented with the permission of the artist.

Burst 4 - Upper Limits

Release Date: 17 February 2015

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Paul Carr talks to Daniel Cartin about his test paper "Upper Limits on the probability of interstellar civilization arising in the local Solar neighborhood"

Daniel Cartin's earlier appearance on the Wow! Signal


Music by Jason Robinson


The spoken content of this podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike license.

Episode 13 - The Great Voids

Release Date: 18 May 2014

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This is our third episode to directly address the Fermi Paradox. Given some reasonable assumptions, the

Earth should have been colonized by a superior technological civilization. We see no evidence of this. Why is that?

No one knows, but the Fermi Paradox serves as a wonderful mental lens to probe our assumptions and ask deeper questions about how well we really understand our universe and its tendency to give rise to long-lived, technologically sophisticated societies with both the ability and drive to colonize their galactic neighborhood.

We talk to Dr. Daniel Cartin about his recent follow up to Geoffrey Landis' percolation framework for understanding the Fermi Paradox, using the well known census of stars in the local solar neighborhood:

Quantifying the Fermi Paradox in the Local Solar Neighborhood

We also talk about the life span of technological civilizations, and I speculate how accidental contact could be important to understanding how this life span could increase over time.

See the Detailed Show Notes

Season 2, Episode 2 of the Wow! Signal by Paul Carr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.