Showing posts with label SETI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SETI. Show all posts

Friday, November 27, 2020

Episode 48 - Chelsea Haramia on the Ethics of METI


Released: 28 November 2020

Duration: 70 minutes, 39 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file.


Co-hosts Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis engage philosopher Chelsea Haramia on the ethics of sending signals into space that might be received by intelligent beings in the cosmos. How do we think coherently about the risks?


Links:






Lyrics to "Time Pops Bubbles"


Guest Bio

Chelsea Haramia received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she specialized in ethics. She is now an assistant professor in the philosophy department at Spring Hill College. She is also co-editor of the online journal 1000-Word Philosophy, which houses a growing set of original 1000-word essays on philosophical questions, figures, and arguments aimed at an audience of philosophers and non-philosophers alike. She has published in the areas of normative ethics, bioethics, animal ethics, aesthetics, feminist philosophy, and astrobiology ethics. Her current work involves ethical and metaethical analyses of space exploration and of the search for intelligent life in particular.  

Credits:

Co-hosts: Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis

Producer: Paul Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, Nest, Erika Lloyd.

 

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


Monday, April 6, 2020

Episode 46 - Extraterrestrials


Released: 6 April 2020
Duration: 53 minutes, 55 seconds

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Author and podcaster Wade Roush talks about his forthcoming book from MIT Press, Extraterrestrials. The book covers astrobiology, SETI, the Fermi paradox and more for a literate but non-specialist audience.

Guest Bio

WADE ROUSH, a Boston-based science and technology journalist, is a columnist at Scientific American and the producer and host of Soonish, an independent podcast about the future. He has served as Boston bureau reporter for Science, senior editor and San Francisco bureau chief at MIT Technology Review, chief correspondent and San Francisco editor for Xconomy, and acting director of MIT’s Knight Science Journalism program. He holds a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT.

Links:

1950 New Yorker Cartoon by Alan Dunn
The Extraterrestrials page at MIT Press
The Extraterrestrials page at Amazon
Six Strange Facts about Oumuamua
Sofia Sheikh and the Nine Axes
The Vanishing Sources
Where is Everybody?
Stephen Webb's Book on the Fermi Paradox
Nathalie Cabrol
Seth Shostak on the Zoo Hypothesis

The MIT Technology Review
The Hub and Spoke Podcast Network
The Soonish podcast

The podcast contact page
Wow! Signal Live

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Lloyd Rogers and Jason Robinson

The Wow! Signal is released under the Creative Commons Attribution License


Thursday, March 19, 2020

Burst 33 - Astronomer David Blank Comments on Episode 41



Released: 20 March 2020
Duration: 31 minutes, 42 seconds

Download the .mp3 audio file.

Astronomer David Blank responded to our invitation to comment on the Villarroel+ paper we covered in Episode 41, which he describes as "very fascinating."

Links

The VASCO project: I. USNO objects missing in modern sky surveys and follow-up observations of a "missing star"
Dorrit Hoffleit  and her autobiography: Misfortunes as Blessings in Disguise
Bradley Schaefer and the Harvard Plates
Josh Grindlay, PI of DASCH
The Very Large Array Sky Survey
The VASCO Citizen Science Project

 

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Lloyd Rogers


The Wow! Signal is released undertone Creative Common Attribution license.

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Upcoming Moonbounce Live Streaming Event

Photo Credit Charles Duke/NASA

The Event

Multidisciplinary artist Daniela De Paulis is organizing a live moonbounce event in Scotland on the Isle of Lewis that will be held on the evening of February 8th 2020 as part of the Hebridean Dark Skies Festival. Wow! Signal Live will livestream the event with a panel of scientists and artists.


How to Watch Live

The scheduled time is 21:00 GMT. That means it will start at 4 P.M. on the East Coast of the USA, and 1 Pm on the West Coast. The live streaming event may start a little earlier than the live event. More details will be announced soon.

Following the live event, the audio from the panel discussion will be made available on our regular podcast feed at this site.


To view the live event, simply go to this YouTube link: https://youtu.be/1tZFOA5TfK0


Edit: a video with credits and improved audio can be found here:
https://youtu.be/a9WaPLffeMw

If you have questions for the panel, you can leave them in the YouTube chat, or at the usual Discord channel on our server.


Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Episode 42 - Moon bouncing with Julia DeMarines


Released: 11 December 2019
Duration: 48 minutes, 30 seconds

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Julia DeMarines
Co-hosts Daniela DePaulis and Paul Carr welcome Julia DeMarines (@LifeNSpace) to talk about Berkeley SETI, and Daniela has used moonbounce in her art projects, including Cogito.
bouncing radio signals off the moon. Julia is involved in a moon bounce research project measuring Earth’s technosignature by observing terrestrial radio waves reflected off of the moon.  
We also get into a discussion of METI, and the importance of message composition to humans.

Guest bio:

Julia DeMarines is an Astrobiologist and science communicator working at the UC Berkeley SETI Research Center and with Blue Marble Space. She is a 2019 National Geographic Explorer and 2018 Grosvenor Teacher Fellow, and a 2019 AGU Voices for Science advocate.  Her research involves detecting life in the Universe through biosignatures and technosignatures and the ethics of sending powerful, intentional messages into space. She is passionate about inspiring the next generation of scientists and  teaches to underserved students around the world through the Ad Astra Academy. Julia also runs her own outreach events called  “Space in Your Face!” – a space variety show involving comedy, local artists, and cover songs. 
Twitter: @LifeNspace
Instagram: @mote_of_dust
Facebook: @JuliaDeMarines

Links

Sullivan (1979), Radio leakage and eavesdropping
Sullivan and Knowles(1985), Lunar Reflections of Terrestrial Radio Leakage.
DeMarines+ (2019), Observing the Earth as a Communicating Exoplanet
The One Earth Message
The LUVOIR telescope
The HabEx Observatory
HawkEye 360
David Grinspoon's appearances on this podcast: first, second, third.
Andrew Siemion's appearances: first, second.

Follow Us on Twitter.
Our Discord Server
Dream of the Open Channel

Credits:

Co-hosts: Daniela DePaulis and Paul Carr
Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson, George Hrab
Software: Zoom,  Loopback, Reaper, Focusrite, Auphonic, OS X Mojave
Hardware: Shure, Cloud,Focusrite, Apple.

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

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Episode 41 - The Vanishing Sources with Beatriz Villarroel



Released: 15 November 2019
Duration: 42 minutes, 24 seconds

Download the .mp3 audio file
Figure 11 from the Paper


Our guest on Burst 19 in 2016, Dr. Beatriz Villarroel, returns to give us an update on the vanishing star, following the release of a new paper detailing a much more ambitious project along the same lines that finds a number of new candidate objects.

Links:

Burst 19: Our Sky Now and Then
The POSS-I Survey
Pan-STARRS
Chasing Disclosure (work of fiction that mentions the earlier research)

Chat with us on Discord

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky and Jason Robinson
Announcer: Erin Carr
This podcast is released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike license.

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

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


Sunday, September 29, 2019

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 The 9 axesshould 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



Wednesday, February 6, 2019

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

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Episode 37 - Sonar Calling GJ 273B



Released: 16 November 2017
Duration: 48 minutes, 5 seconds

Host Paul Carr talks to Douglas Vakoch of METI.org about a recent transmission using a powerful
radar transmitter to the star GJ 273, which has a super-Earth planet circling it in the habitable zone.

Download the .mp3 audio file

Links:

GJ 273 on SIMBAD
The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets XLI. A dozen planets around the M dwarfs GJ 3138, GJ 3323, GJ 273, GJ 628, and GJ 3293
GJ 273 in the Open Exoplanet Catalog
The EISCAT Tromso Facility
Sonar Barcelona
EISCAT Tromso Site
The Arecibo Message
Ignasi Ribas
The Story of Lincos

Our previous interview with Douglas Vakoch

The Unseen Podcast

Credits:

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




Monday, February 13, 2017

Episode 35 - There is Here



Released: 13 February 2017
Duration:90 minutes, 38 seconds
Doug Vakoch

Download the .mp3 audio file

In this episode we explore Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or METI, with METI.org President Douglas Vakoch and interdisciplinary artist Daniela de Paulis. Nick Nielsen joins us for a discussion of Daniela's new project Cogito - how do we send our thoughts into the cosmos?

Links:

The Pioneer Plaques
The Drake Arecibo Message
Dwingeloo Radio Observatory in the Netherlands
The Voyager Golden Record
METI.org Strategic Plan
The Zoo Hypothesis

Marvin Minsky: Communication with Alien Intelligence
Hans Freudenthal: LINCOS - Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse, part 1 (.pdf)

Daniela de Paulis on the Unseen Podcast
Project Cogito in Space
Dwingeloo Radio Observatory

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Co-hosts: Daniela de Paulis and Nick Nielsen
Music: DJ Spooky, George Hrab, Erika Llloyd
Voiceover: Erin Carr

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


Monday, January 2, 2017

Burst 21 - The Absolute, Definitive Truth about Alien Megastructures



Released: 2 January 2017
Duration: 15 minutes, 37 seconds

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Based upon a Dream of the Open Channel blog entry, we discuss why there may not be any galaxy-scale megastructures, but what sort of stellar class megastructures could we possibly observe out there.

Please visit wowsignalpodcast.com for more information about this podcast.

 

Links:

Why Search?
The Jaws of Darkness
Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies
GHAT III: The Reddest Extended Sources from WISE
Earth in Human Hands
Searching for Cost Optimized Interstellar Beacons

The Script (several red lines not incorporated).

Wow! Signal Bursts

Credits:

Host, Writer and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

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


Monday, November 28, 2016

Episode 34: Human Up - The Planet's Future with David Grinspoon


Released: 28 November 2016
Duration: 59 minutes, 2 seconds

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David Grinspoon

Astrobiologist and Author David Grinspoon joins us to talk about his new book, Earth in Human Hands - Shaping Our Planet's Future. Following all the great demotions, humanity is about to get a great promotion - and we're not ready for it, but we have no choice.

Links:


Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Announcer: Erin Carr
Music: DJ Spooky, Erika Lloyd, George Hrab





Monday, August 1, 2016

Burst 19 - Our Sky Now and Then



Released: 31 July 2016
Duration: 24 minutes, 11 seconds

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Palomar Sky Survey image from 1950 around the area in question
Host Paul Carr discusses the recent paper "Our Sky Now and Then" with lead author and astronomer Beatriz Villarroel,a PhD student at the University of Upsalla in Sweden, Ms. Villarroel's team was undertaking an alternative approach to SETI, looking for evidence of effects in astronomical data that could not be due to natural effects.


Links:

Our Sky Now and Then
The USNO B1.0 Catalog
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey
The Lost Star (Vizier)
The Nearby Infrared WISE object
Jason Wright: A WISE Search for Large Extraterrestrial Civilizations

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson


Monday, July 4, 2016

Burst 18 - Nick Nielsen on the Spoor of Civilizations


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

Download the .mp3 audio file

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:

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


Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Episode 31 - Journey Into the World of Alien Hunting



Released: 22 June 2016
Duration: 41 minutes, 19 seconds

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SETI scientists featured in Earthling's Quest
Daniela De Paulis hosts a conversation with the team producing the crowdfunded feature-length SETI documentary Earthling's Quest, and one of the scientists profiled in the film, Douglas Vakoch. We urge you to consider contributing to the Kickstarter for this film.


  • opening
  • Daniela's intro
  • introduction to the Earthling's Quest team: Alexander Ryneus and Per Bifrost (film co-directors), and Malla Grapengiesser (producer).
  • Introduction of Douglas Vakoch
  • Introduction on SETI and METI
  • What is the focus of the documentary?
  • Why is SETI so timely
  • Possibilities of finding extraterrestrial intelligent life
  • Why should we contact other life forms?
  • Should we be afraid?
  • closing remarks and discussion
  • Brief announcements
  • outro

The Earthling's Quest team

Links:

METI International
The SETI Institute
The Earthling's Quest Kickstarter

Our updated Team page

Credits:

Host: Daniela De Paulis
Producer: Paul Carr
Announcer: Erin Carr
Music: DJ Spooky, Erika Lloyd, George Hrab




Thursday, March 31, 2016

Burst 16 - Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 2.



Released: 31 March 2016
Duration: 13 minutes, 21 seconds

Download the .mp3 audio file

Paul Carr continues with our series explaining just what is so puzzling about Tabby's Star, aka KIC 8462852. In this part we talk about some of the candidate explanations, including alien megastructures,with a Dyson Swarm being one such megastructure. It turns out there is a problem with the naive Dyson Swarm.

We briefly discuss the possible long-term dimming of Tabby's Star put forth by Bradley Schaefer, and its effect on the family of megastructures hypotheses.

Links

Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 1
The Slow and Fast Dimming of Tabby's Star
AstroWright

Credits:

Written, Produced, and Voiced by Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

The spoken portion of the Wow! Signal Podcast is Distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license. All music is either Creative Commons, or is used with permission of the artists.



Wednesday, March 16, 2016

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


Saturday, February 13, 2016

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 SilenceWhy the Fermi Paradox Must be Taken SeriouslyAddendum 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


Two new Bursts out soon

In a day or two, we'll have Nick Nielsen's thoughts on SETI as a Process of Elimination. This will be Burst 12. It's recorded, and is just awaiting its show notes.
The numbered dips in Tabby's Star


Burst 13 will be part 1 of "Tabby's Star for the Perplexed." You can read the companion blog post, which itself is still under construction, but is mostly there, especially the first part. That should be out a few days after Burst 12. Stay tuned.