Episode 41 - The Vanishing Sources with Beatriz Villarroel

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

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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

Villarroel+: The Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations project: I. USNO objects missing in modern sky surveys and follow-up observations of a "missing star"

The POSS-I Survey
Pan-STARRS
Chasing Disclosure (work of fiction that mentions the earlier research)

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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.

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
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