Burst 31 Beyond the SETI Paradigm

Released: 6 February 2019
Duration: 16 Minutes, 51 Seconds

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Avi Loeb

Abraham Loeb and Shmuel Bialy kicked up a kerfuffle when they wrote a paper suggesting that one possible explanation for ‘Oumuamua was that it could be an artificial object, in other words, an alien spacecraft—specifically, a lightsail. The two have been praised for their boldness and condemned for their recklessness, but little has been said concerning the possibility of detecting a lightsail as a technosignature in comparison to detecting a “conventional” technosignature such as the radio and laser beacons that SETI searches for. When we look out into the universe for signs of intelligence, if there are technosignatures to be seen, what technologies ought we to expect to be the most common?  

Links

Stagnant Supercivilizations and Interstellar Travel
“Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain ‘Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?” Bialy and Loeb
 Predictably, online media go nuts over ‘Oumuamua and Harvard scientists; “Scientists are perfectly happy to publish an outlandish idea.” by Eric Berger
Breakthrough Starshot
lightsail (Wikipedia)
The Interstellar Age: The Story of the NASA Men and Women Who Flew the Forty-Year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell
NASA Voyager 2 Could Be Nearing Interstellar Space
The Great Filter—Are We Almost Past It? by Robin Hanson
SETI as a Process of Elimination

Credits

Written and Presented by: Nick Nielsen
Postproduction: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky

This podcast episode is released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license

Burst 28 - The Cosmic Archipelago, part III

Released: 6 February 2018
Duration: 24 minutes, 48 seconds

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A hundred years ago cosmologists were struggling to understand the nature and structure of the universe, and at the heart of this struggle was the island universe hypothesis. Today we find ourselves confronted with a similar question posed at a far greater scale. In order to resolve our cosmic archipelago problem we will have to attempt to reconstruct a history of our universe as a part of a far larger cosmological system, and to do this we will have to extend cosmology beyond the observable universe -- but what, exactly, is the observable universe?

Links:

The Cosmic Archipelago, Part I
The Cosmic Archipelago, Part II
Normal science

The Snapshot Effect

Radio Technology and Existential Risk

Boyajian's Star (KIC 8462852)

Supernova iPTF14hls
Przybylski's Star

Scientific Historiography: Past, Present, and Future

The Face of the Past

The Face of the Past, Part Two

Credits:

Writer and Host: Nick Nielsen
Producer and Announcer: Paul Carr
Music: by kind permission of the artist, Jason Robinson

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

Burst 27 - The Cosmic Archipelago - Part 2

Released: 25 January 2018
Duration: 21 minutes, 51 seconds

The geologic time spiral

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The Cosmic Archipelago, part 1.

A hundred years ago cosmologists were struggling to understand the nature and structure of the universe, and at the heart of this struggle was the island universe hypothesis. Today we find ourselves confronted with a similar question posed at a far greater scale. As we confront these great questions of cosmology, whether a hundred years ago or today, we find ourselves faced with as many philosophical questions as scientific questions when we challenge the boundaries of our understanding. In Part II we focus on cosmological scales of time and what this means for human observation of a very old universe.

Links:

The Realm of the Nebula, Edwin Hubble

Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Immanuel Kant

The Great Debate

The Scale of the Universe, Shapley and Curtis

The 1920 Shapley-Curtis Discussion: Background,Issues, and Aftermath, V. Trimble

NGC 6822, a remote stellar system, Edwin Hubble

F. H. Bradley

deep time

Stellar Movements and the Structure of the Universe, Arthur Eddington

The Retrodiction Wall

Addendum on the Retrodiction Wall

Eternity in six hours: Intergalactic spreading of intelligent life and sharpening the Fermi paradox, Stuart Armstrong and Anders Sandberg

The End of Cosmology? Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert J. Scherrer

Credits:

Writer and Host: Nick Nielsen
Voiceover and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

Burst 26 - The Cosmic Archipelago, Part 1.

Released: 21 January 2018
Duration: 19 minutes

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Henrietta Swan Leavitt,
discoverer of Leavitt's Law

A hundred years ago cosmologists were struggling to understand the nature and structure of the universe, and at the heart of this struggle was the island universe hypothesis.
Today we find ourselves confronted with a similar question posed at a far greater scale. As we confront these great questions of cosmology, whether a hundred years ago or today, we find ourselves faced with as many philosophical questions as scientific questions when we challenge the boundaries of our understanding. In Part I we focus on the original problems of constructing the cosmological distance ladder.

Links:

The Realm of the Nebula, Edwin Hubble

Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Immanuel Kant

The Great Debate

The Scale of the Universe, Shapley and Curtis

The 1920 Shapley-Curtis Discussion: Background,Issues, and Aftermath, V. Trimble

NGC 6822, a remote stellar system, Edwin Hubble

F. H. Bradley

deep time

Stellar Movements and the Structure of the Universe, Arthur Eddington

The Retrodiction Wall

Addendum on the Retrodiction Wall

Eternity in six hours: Intergalactic spreading of intelligent life and sharpening the Fermi paradox, Stuart Armstrong and Anders Sandberg

The End of Cosmology? Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert J. Scherrer

 

Credits:

Writer and Host: Nick Nielsen
Producer and Voiceover: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

Episode 38 - The Overview Effect

Released: 31 December 2017
Duration: 65 minutes, 20 seconds

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Daniela DePaulis and Nick Nielsen in conversation with Frank White on the Overview Effect.

Detailed show notes To Be Supplied.

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

Burst 18 - Nick Nielsen on the Spoor of Civilizations

Released: 4 July 2016
Duration: 20 minutes, 41 seconds

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SETI research is much like the traditional task of a tracker, who seeks the spoor of elusive quarry through a wilderness. In the search for life, intelligence, and exocivilizations we find ourselves in the position of seeking the spoor of these higher emergent complexities in the cosmological wilderness.

Links:

SETI as a Process of Elimiation (Wow! Signal Burst) 

SETI as a Process of Elimination (Medium post)

The Eerie Silence: Renewing our Search for Alien Intelligence, Paul Davies 

The Wilderness Hypothesis (Wow! Signal Burst) 

The Halos of Vanished Civilizations (Wow! Signal Burst)
Another Astrobiological Thought Experiment (Tumblr post)

Credits:

Writer and Presenter: Nick Nielsen
Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

Burst 15 - Nick Nielsen on the Social Context of SETI

Released: 16 March 2016
Duration: 13 minutes, 25 seconds

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Science does not occur in a vacuum, and this is doubly true in the case of SETI, which is said to suffer from a "giggle factor." How does social context shape the scientific research program of SETI? The public at times shows great interest in SETI, but this attention can cut two ways, both benefiting and harming the discipline. Nowhere is this more true than in funding for SETI research.

Our SETI Thread

Credits:

Written and Read by: Nick Nielsen
Producer and VO: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

Burst 12 - Nick Nielsen on SETI as a Process of Elimination

Released: 13 February 2016
Duration:20 minutes, 35 seconds

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Nick Nielsens's show notes:

In so far as SETI is a science -- and it aspires to be a science even as its critics argue that it falls short -- should its emphasis fall upon confirmation or disconfirmation? I argue that the falsification of narrowly formulated hypotheses about exocivilizations can both demonstrate the scientificity of SETI as well as refine our conception of exocivilizations, hence refining our idea of the exact nature of the object of our search.  

The origin of this Wow! Signal Burst (now revised and updated so that little remains of the original except the central idea) is a blog post that I wrote some time ago, SETI as a Process of Elimination, which was part of a series of posts about SETI, including Methodological Naturalism and the Eerie Silence, Why the Fermi Paradox Must be Taken Seriously, Addendum on the Fermi Paradox,  The Visibility Presumption, and Searching the Sky.

Credits

Written and Read by: Nick Nielsen
Producer and VO: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

Burst 10 - Nick Nielsen on the Wilderness Hypothesis

Released: 3 December 2015
Duration: 13 minutes, 43 seconds

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Is the cosmos a trackless wilderness in which apex predators, in the form of advanced extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs), roam at will, and vulnerable civilizations (like ours) learn to maintain a low profile? Nick Nielsen considers some variations on the theme of the 'zoo hypothesis' of John Ball, each being a response to the Fermi paradox, and how we might prefer to 'play dead' as a civilization given the potential dangers of the cosmos primeval.

Links

The Zoo Hypothesis by John Ball (PDF)
The Wilderness Hypothesis post at the Grand Strategy Annex
Another Astrobiological Thought Experiment and a Comment Response
If the Universe is Teeming with Aliens, Where is Everybody?
Observational Signatures of Self Destructive Civilizations
The Cosmos Primeval

Credits

Writer and Presenter: Nick Nielsen
Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

Burst 9 - The Halos of Vanished Civilizations

Released: 21 November 2015
Duration: 15 minutes, 30 seconds

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Nick Nielsen talks about what we might observe from long dead ET civilizations.

Links

Nick Nielsen's Bio
Nick Nielsen's Blog Post "The Halos of Advanced Civlizations"
How Old is ET?
The Relative Rate of LGRB Formation as a Function of Metallicity
Observational Signatures of Self Destructive Civilizations

Credits

Written and Read by: Nick Nielsen
Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson