Meet Adriana Knouf, our newest artist in residence! Adriana engages with topics such as wet media, space art, satellites, radio transmission, non-human encounters, queer and trans futurities, and machine learning. Join SETI AIR Director Bettina Forget and Adriana as they talk about her project TX-1, which has flown on the International Space Station, TX-2, an experiment in speculative satellite construction, and how space travel can be made more accessible to those marked as transgender. Recorde...
Aug 15, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Gravitational waves play a cosmic symphony as they pass through our galaxy. This week, the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) Physics Frontiers Center released the results of 15 years of data in a set of papers published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. This research is the first evidence of gravitational waves at very low frequencies. The team, comprised of 190 scientists, transformed our region of the Milky Way Galaxy into an immense gravitational-wave...
Aug 08, 2023•38 min•Season 1Ep. 18
The search for life beyond Earth received a slight boost from new research published in Nature this month. Scientists working with data collected by NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn discovered evidence of phosphates in ice particles ejected via cryovolcanism into the E-ring structure by the tiny moon Enceladus. Although a mere 500 kilometers in diameter, Enceladus is a huge target in the quest for astrobiology in our solar system as beneath the outer ice shell lies a subsurface ocean about 10 km...
Aug 01, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Dr. Nathalie Cabrol, Director of the SETI Institute's Carl Sagan Center, joins us live from the Global Exploration Summit in Portugal. Last week Cabrol was co-author on a comment published in Nature Astronomy that explored the implications and potential scientific impacts on increased activity on Mars, specifically, human-crewed missions. How will the presence of people on Mars affect the search for past or present life and what planetary protection measures will be required to protect the integ...
Jul 25, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 16
NASA's JWST revealed a groundbreaking discovery about the true nature of main belt comets. The surprising presence of water in a main belt comet is challenging our understanding of the solar system's origins. The recent study of this enigmatic comet ignited intriguing questions about its composition, history, and potential interstellar origins. Join Mike Kelley, an astronomer from the University of Maryland, and Dr. Franck Marchis, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, for our next SETI Liv...
Jul 18, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 15
A team of scientists and engineers from the SETI Institute, Impossible Sensing, NASA JPL, and other institutions will test their innovative robotic laser system on a deep-sea expedition aboard the E/V Nautilus. The mission, called InVADER (In-situ Vent Analysis Divebot for Exobiology Research), aims to advance technologies to explore, characterize and sample the seabed here on Earth. In particular, InVADER’s Laser Divebot will find marine minerals and catalog biodiversity in the seabed faster an...
Jul 12, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 14
There was a total solar eclipse in Australia on Thursday, April 20 (which was Wednesday, April 19 here in California). Join SETI Institute CEO Bill Diamond with Madhulika (Lika) Guhathkurta, PhD Senior Advisor for New Initiatives, GSFC/HPD Program Scientist/Heliophysics, NASA HQ. Lika is in Australia for the eclipse and will talk to us about what we can learn from this phenomenon and why eclipses are so special. Recorded 18 April 2023.
Jul 03, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 13
A new NASA mission to Saturn’s giant moon, Titan, is due to launch in 2027. When it arrives in the mid-2030s, it will begin a journey of discovery that could bring about a new understanding of the development of life in the universe. This mission, called Dragonfly, will carry an instrument called the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS), designed to help scientists hone in on the chemistry at work on Titan. It may also shed light on the kinds of chemical steps that occurred on Earth that ultimate...
Jun 27, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 12
As research teams around the world prepare for the launch of two separate missions to our 'sister planet' Venus, other scientists are spending their time looking through the data already collected by previous missions. Take, for example, the Magellan spacecraft, which mapped the surface of Venus from September 1990 through October 1994 using synthetic aperture radar. Last month, Science published a new paper detailing how scientists compared two radar images space eight months apart and discover...
Jun 20, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Author and book designer Rebecca Demarest will be featured on this episode of SETI Live, along with astronomer and SETI Research Scientist Paul Dalba. The two will delve into the upcoming Exotopia expedition, an experimental sci-fi narrative that invites participants to embark on imaginary journeys to study extraterrestrial life on actual exoplanets within our galaxy. The forthcoming voyage will transport us to TOI-1452 b, a super-Earth exoplanet situated roughly 100 lightyears from Earth. TOI-1...
Jun 13, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 10
When pondering the probability of discovering technologically advanced extraterrestrial life, the question that often arises is, "if they're out there, why haven't we found them yet?" And often, the response is that we have only searched a tiny portion of the galaxy. Further, algorithms developed decades ago for the earliest digital computers can be outdated and inefficient when applied to modern petabyte-scale datasets. Now, research published in Nature Astronomy and led by an undergraduate stu...
Jun 06, 2023•38 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Astronomers learn about the universe by looking up, but the closest, most fascinating and most important (to us) astronomical object is below our feet. As we discover more and more planets in our galaxy, the importance of understanding and protecting our own “pale blue dot” becomes ever more critical. Join Professor Adrienne Cool, astrophysicist at San Francisco State University and founder of Astronomers for Planet Earth and Jessica Agnos, co-founder, in a conversation about the universe, the E...
May 30, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 8
The NASA DART mission impacted Dimorphos, the moon of near-Earth asteroid Didymos, on September 26, 2022, reducing its orbit by 33 minutes. Citizen astronomers around the world contributed crucial observations to quantify the impact's effects and understand our ability to alter an asteroid's path for planetary defense. Learn more from SETI Postdoctoral Fellow Ariel Graykowski on the implications for the future of planetary defense. Nature paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05852-9...
May 23, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 7
The Juno spacecraft launched on August 5, 2011, and arrived at Jupiter in 2016, where the mission began collecting data on the gas giant. In January 2021, NASA announced that the spacecraft's mission had been extended to September 2025. The extended mission’s science campaigns expand on discoveries Juno has already made about Jupiter’s interior structure, internal magnetic field, atmosphere (including polar cyclones, deep atmosphere, and auroras), and magnetosphere. Juno’s extended mission also ...
May 16, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 6
New research suggests that a lack of a stable asteroid belt around these common, small, and cool stars may make their exoplanets less habitable for life. Join us in conversation with lead researcher Anna C. Childs to explore the implications of this research and the future of the search for alien life. Learn more about the most common type of star in our galaxy and the potential challenges in finding habitable exoplanets orbiting M dwarfs. Paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8...
May 09, 2023•28 min•Season 1Ep. 5
A new comet, C/2022 E3 (ZTF), is making a rare visit to Earth, coming closer than it has in over 50,000 years. Stargazers around the world have admired its eerie green glow and bright tail of dust. Join SETI Institute Senior Planetary Astronomer, Dr. Franck Marchis, and Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Ariel Graykowski, as they discuss the significance of this comet and its impact on the search for life in space. Learn about comets and the night sky in this once-in-a-lifetime event. Recorded live on 2 F...
May 02, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 4
SETI Institute's Artist-in-Residence, Felipe Pérez Santiago, discusses the ambitious Earthling Project. Launched in 2020, the project collects songs from people around the world to create musical compositions representing humanity. These compositions will be sent into space with the help of the Arch Mission Foundation, a nonprofit preserving human knowledge for future generations. Tune in to hear from Santiago and SETI AIR Director Bettina Forget, and listen to the world sing in harmony on the E...
Apr 25, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Using data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, researchers at the University of Montreal found evidence that two exoplanets orbiting a star 218 light-years away are “water worlds,” where water makes up a large fraction of the entire planet. These planets are unlike planets in our solar system -- they were previously believed to be rocky Earth-like planets but instead are really water worlds. Listen to Franck Marchis in conversation with lead researcher Caroline Piaulet to learn abou...
Apr 18, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 2
We have to admit that 2022 was an impressive year for space science, what with JWST starting to collect science data and even releasing early results, the launch and return of the Artemis 1 mission, the DART mission, a NASA Juno flyby of Europa, and the end of the NASA InSight lander mission. And that was just NASA's part of the activity! China, Japan, and South Korea all launched missions, while commercial launches and space tourism continued to increase. 2023 is definitely shaping up to match....
Feb 27, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 1
