Episode 40 - Extraterrestrial Languages

Released: 16 October 2019
Duration: 54 minutes, 51 seconds

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Extraterresrial Languages is a forthcoming book about the human quest to craft messages that can be understood across interstellar distances. We may want to tell ET about  ourselves, or it may be help ET send message to us that we will know how to interpret.

At the end, we also spend a couple of minutes catching up with Daniela de Paulis.

Daniel Oberhaus is a staff writer at Wired Magazine, where he covers space and energy. His first book, Extraterrestrial Languages, will be released by MIT Press on October 22, 2019. 

Support the podcast at Patreon.com.

Links

MIT Press Page for Interstellar Languages
Follow Daniel Oberhaus on Twitter

Daniela de Paulis
The 2017 Sonar message
There is Here
The Risks of METI and Religious Aliens
Marvin Minsky: Communication with Alien Intelligence
The Question: the ontological status of mathematics

Follow us on Twitter
Our YouTube Channel

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Co-Host: Daniela De Paulis
Music: DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson, George Hrab
Announcer: Erin Carr


Cogito in Space - Reportage teaser from Sandro Bocci on Vimeo.

The Wow! Signal is released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license

Episode 39 - Sofia Sheik and The Nine Axes

Released: 29 September 2019
Duration: 49 minutes, 52 seconds

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Download Sofia's paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.02683

A conversation with SETI researcher Sofia Sheikh about how we should evaluate technosignature search strategies. We cover three examples of technosignature searches and their relative advantages.

Sofia Sheikh is a third-year graduate student at the Pennsylvania State University working with Dr. Jason Wright. She did her undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, where she became involved with the Breakthrough Listen Initiative. Her work incorporates both theoretical approaches to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and observational radio searches for technosignatures. She intends to be the first woman to complete a SETI PhD thesis.

Links

The Nine Axes of Merit
Sofia Sheik's Twitter Page
Andrew Siemion on SETI at the SKA
Breakthrough Listen
The Truth about Alien Megastructures
Sonar Calling GJ273B

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Announcer: Erin Carr
Music: DJ Spooky, Erika Lloyd, Jason Robinson
Hardware: Shure, Audio Technica, Pro Art, Behringer, Focusrite, Apple.
Software: Skype, Loopback, Reaper, Auphonic Desktop
Hosting: Libsyn

Episode 33 - Ben Montet Makes a Star Weirder

Released: 8 August 2016
Duration:47 minutes 44 seconds

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Ben Montet

Host Paul Carr talks to astronomer Ben Montet,who has, with his colleague Joshua Simon, just published the result that Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852) dimmed considerably over the four year course of the Kepler Space Telescope prime mission.

Guest Bio:

Ben Montet recently defended his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology, where his thesis work focused on understanding the properties of low-mass stars and their companions. During his thesis, he led teams which measured the occurrence rate of Jupiter-sized planets in wide orbits around low-mass stars, developed the first catalog of confirmed transiting planets from the K2 mission, and characterized the first non-inflated brown dwarf with a directly measured mass, radius, and atmospheric properties. In September, he will begin a Carl Sagan Fellowship at the University of Chicago.

Links:

Montet and Simon, KIC 8462852 Faded Throughout the Kepler Mission
Interview with Bradley Schaefer on Dimming of Tabby's Star
Boyajian, et. al., KIC 8462852 - Where's The Flux?
Interview with Tabetha "Tabby" Boyajian.

Aliens, perhaps, but not the Aliens of the Gaps.

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Announcer:Erin Carr
Music: DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson, Erika Lloyd

Episode 32 - Nathaniel Comfort and the Biography of DNA

Released: 28 July 2016
Duration: 43 minutes, 45 seconds

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James Garrison speaks with latest holder of the Library of Congress Baruch Blumberg chair of astrobiology, Nathaniel Comfort. His current book project is the biography of DNA.

Links:

Our Interview with David Grinspoon

Nathaniel Comfort

Our Interview with Steven Dick
Mike Russell
New Study Outlines "Water World" Theory of the Origin of Life
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Dr. Barbara McClintock
Steven Benner

Genotopia
Ingenous: Nathaniel Comfort

Credits:

Host: James Garrison
Producer: Paul Carr
Announcer: Erin Carr
Music: DJ Spooky and Frank Dorritke

Episode 28 - Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, part 3

Released: 6 April 2016
Duration: 43 minutes, 45 seconds
Thread: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Tabetha "Tabby" Boyajian

In Tabbys' Star for the Perplexed Part 1, we explained why KIC 8462852 is a puzzling star. In Part 2, we talked
about some of the explanations put forth and their weaknesses. In the third and last (for now) part of the series, we talk to Tabby herself, and she answers several reasonably informed questions about her team's work, past, present and future.

• Introduction
• Interview with Yale's Tabetha "Tabby" Boyajian concerning KIC 8462852
• Frequently Asked Questions on Tabby's Star
• Some of the better speculative solutions
• Wrap up
• Thanking Patreon Subscribers
• Nagging, Begging
• We want to hear from you
• Outro

Links:

Boyajian, et. al., Planet Hunters IX: KIC 8462852 - Where's the Flux?
Tabby's Star for the Perplexed (blog post)
Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 1
Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 2
The Most Mysterious Star in the Universe

KIC 8462852 Facebook Page

Schaefer, KIC 8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165 +/- 0.014 Magnitudes Per Century from 1890 to 1989.
LCOGT
The Swift Mission
The AAVSO
Planet Hunters

KIC8462852 Subreddit
Centauri Dreams
The Unseen Podcast: I'm not saying it was aliens, but...

 

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
VO: Erin Carr
Music: DJ Spooky and Sleep Research Facility

The spoken content of the Wow! Signal is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike license.

Episode 23 - The Noble Ape

Tom Barbalet

Release Date: 15 February 2015

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Host Tim Jones engages Tom Barbalet in a wide ranging conversation centered around his Artificial
Life environment Noble Ape and its applications to space exploration.
Music by DJ Spooky and Erika Lloyd.

Detailed Show Notes

Distributed under Creative Commons AttributionShare-Alike license.

Episode 21 - Near and Far

Release Date: 14 January 2015

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Paul Carr and Mike Mongo talk about the near future of the Wow! Signal Podcast and the long term future of humanity. Will we colonize Mars or the Moon? How about starships?

Detailed Show Notes

Music by DJ Spooky

Episode 19 - Actually, Wow!

Release Date: 18 November 2014

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Bob Dixon

This podcast is named after an event that took place on 15 August 1977 at the Ohio State Big Ear radio astronomy observatory. Astronomer Jerry Ehman noticed a signal that looked exactly like what they were looking for - an ET radio beacon. Was it?

We talk to Dr. Robert S. "Bob" Dixon, who was instrumental in bringing the Big Ear instrument to bear on the SETI problem, in his very first podcast interview. Among other things, he tells us about the experimental Argus array, which if built full scale, could help us catch a reoccurrence of the Wow! Signal.

Music by DJ Spooky, George Hrab, Erika Lloyd and Chanticleer.

Detailed Show Notes with links

The Big Ear Radio Telescope near Delaware, Ohio.

Actually,Wow! by Paul Carr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://traffic.libsyn.com/wowsignal/S2_E7_WowActually.mp3.

Episode 18 - The Habitability Lab

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Abel Mendez

We talk to planetary scientist and astrobiologist Abel Mendez about what is presently understood about the habitability of exoplanets, and the habitable exoplanet catalog.

Music by DJ Spooky and Ahleuchatistas.


The Detailed Show Notes





The Habitability Lab by Paul Carr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://traffic.libsyn.com/wowsignal/S2_E6_The_Hab_Lab.mp3.

Episode 17 - The Long Delays

Release Date: 29 October 2014

Alan Penny

Is SETA really just local SETI? It makes sense to me, and to Alan Penny, coordinator of the UK SETI Research Network. We talk to Dr. Penny about the future of SETI. Then, we talk to another Scottish astronomer Duncan Lunan about the scientific mystery of the Long Delay Echoes. Are the LDEs from a Bracewell Probe?

Music by DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson, Erika Lloyd and George Hrab

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Detailed Show Notes




The Long Delays by Paul Carr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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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.

Episode 9 - Listening to the Silence

Released: 27 July 2013

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The Fermi Paradox, Part 2, with Universe Today's Fraser Cain and University of Edinburgh's Duncan Forgan.  Why, as far as we can tell, has the Earth not been colonized by superior alien civilizations?This question is called the Fermi Paradox, and it is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. We discuss just how strong the Fermi Paradox is, and the kind of research program it will take to resolve it.

The Wow! Signal Podcast podcasting seal of approval goes to: Penn's Sunday School.



Links:

Fraser Cain

Episode 2 - the Fermi Paradox with Geoffrey Landis

Universe Today

Duncan Forgan

Duncan Forgan et. al. , The Effect of Probe Dynamics on Galactic Exploration Timescales

Self Replicating Probes Could Already Be Here

The Kardashev Scale
Haldane's Law
Clarke's Third Law
The Fermi Paradox, Part 1 (blog entry)

The NASA Kepler Mission
Terrestrial Planet Finder

The Episode 9 Script

Penn's Sunday School

Duncan Forgan

The Music

Ahleuchatistas

DJ Spooky

Jason Robinson

John Baez and Mark Egan's Telesto
Cuneiform Records 

Episode 8 - Cosmik Debris

Release Date: 25 June 2013

Duncan Forgan

The topic for Episode 8 is asteroid mining - the prospects for asteroid mining by humans in our solar system and for detecting its traces should an ET civilization be doing it in a nearby planetary system.  I spoke to scientist Duncan Forgan, entrepreneur Isaac Stott, and Ben Wright McGee, who wears a lot of hats.

Of course, the title refers to a Frank Zappa song about a New Age charlatan, but as you will hear, I don't think asteroid mining is a con.  It's just that asteroids are - debris.

The fifth Wow! Signal Podcast podcasting seal of approval is awarded to: Sid Smith's Podcast from the Yellow Room.

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Isaac Stott

The Episode 8 script

Guests:

Dr. Duncan Forgan is a researcher at the University of Edinburgh.  His research interests include planetary system formation and theoretical SETI.

• Duncan Forgan and Martin Elvis, "Extrasolar Asteroid Mining as Forensic Evidence of Extraterrestrial Intelligence"

Isaac Stott is CEO of Stott Space, a company that aims to be the first to mine an asteroid.

• Stott's architecture for robotic asteroid mining

Ben Wright McGee is a scientist, writer and space entrepreneur

Ben Wright McGee

• Calling the Space Privateers.

Other Links

Planetary Resources
Deep Space Industries
Near Earth Object (NEO) Catalog
The Wow! Signal Podcast on iTunes

The Music

Ahleuchatistas
Jason Robinson
Mike Griffin
DJ Spooky






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Episode 5 - Superior Galactic Communities

The Search for Bracewell Probes, Part 1

An introduction to the Search for Bracewell Probes, with a liberal sprinkling of music by DJ Spooky (aka Paul D. Miller) from his album "Songs of a Dead Dreamer."  Also, a song by George Hrab.

In part 1, I cover what the hypothetical thing called a Bracewell Probe is, and discuss some of the variables that might affect whether or not it would be possible for us to to detect one in our own solar system.  We don't know whether they exist, but if they do, we want to find them....

The second Wow! Signal Podcast seal of approval for podcasting is awarded to Oh, No, Ross and Carrie!

Links
download the mp3 file directly
Subscribe to this Podcast
The script for Episode 5 (not followed exactly)
Bracewell Probes, part 1 and part 2
A paper on SETA.
SETA and 1991 VG

Oh No, Ross and Carrie.

The Music
DJ Spooky
Jason Robinson
Sleep Research Facility
George Hrab