SETI Institute Colloquium Series Videos

SETI Institute Colloquium Series Videos episodes:

• 03.11.2009

  03/04/2009 - Google Earth, now with Mars!

  Ross A. Beyer, SETI Institute and NASA AmesGoogle, Inc., has released Google Earth 5.0 which contains a Mars 3D mode. Working with engineers at Google, we helped collect, parse, and organize the vast store of Mars geospatial data available to...

  
• 02.27.2009

  02/25/2009 - Interstellar and Early Solar System Organics in Samples from Comet Wild 2

  Scott Sandford, NASA Ames Space Science DivisionThe Stardust mission successfully returned samples from Comet Wild 2 in 2006. Studies of these samples have confirmed the presence of organics, some of which appear to be similar to those found in meteorites...

  
• 02.27.2009

  02/18/2009 - Multiple Asteroid Systems: New Techniques to Study New Worlds

  Franck Marchis, UC Berkeley and the SETI Institute Since the discovery of Ida’s companion Dactyl in 1993, the number of known multiple asteroids has been continuously increasing and ~165 of them are now known. Since 2003, Dr. Marchis and his...

  
• 02.27.2009

  10/29/2008 - Giant Planet Formation

  Dr. Jack Lissauer, Space Sciences Division, NASA Ames Research Center The observed properties of giant planets, models of their evolution, and observations of protoplanetary disks all provide constraints on the formation of gas giant planets. The four largest planets in...

  
• 02.25.2009

  01/28/2009 - Surface modifications by winds on Earth, Mars, Venus, and Titan

  Ron Greeley, Regent's Professor, Arizona State University Windblown dunes, ripples, and erosional features are seen on Earth, Venus, and Titan, while on Mars these features are ubiquitous and reflect the dominant agent of surface modification. Although the fundamental process is...

  
• 02.25.2009

  11/05/2008 - The Allen Telescope Array: A Radio Survey Telescope for the 21st Century

  Don Backer and Jill TarterJill Tarter will talk about the large survey SETI observing programs to be undertaken by our in-house team over the next decade, the SETI observing projects from external proposers that have been allocated array time during...

  
• 02.25.2009

  10/22/2008 - MIPSGAL: MIPS/Spitzer Survey of the Galactic Plane

  Dr. Sachindev Shenoy MIPSGAL is a survey of the Galactic plane at 24 and 70 microns using Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS) Space Telescope. This is one of the most sensitive survey in the mid-infrared of our Galactic plane....

  
• 02.25.2009

  09/24/2008 - Black Holes: End of Time or a New Beginning?

  Prof. Roger Blandford, Stanford Linear Accelerator and Physics, Stanford University Black holes are popularly associated with death and destruction (excluding romances dealing with the redemptive properties of wormholes). However, their conventional astrophysical role is now seen as regenerative and they...

  
• 02.18.2009

  02/05/2008 - The Hunt for Hidden Dimensions

  JoAnne Hewett, Professor at SLAC, Stanford University Extra dimensions of space may be present in our universe. Their discovery would dramatically change our view of the cosmos and would prompt many questions. How do they hide? What is their shape?...

  
• 02.18.2009

  01/21/2009 - Roundup at the Kepler Corral: the Race to Detect the First Earth-sized Planet in the Habitable Zone of a Sunlike Star

  Dr. Jeffrey Van Cleve, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp The Kepler Mission http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov is designed to detect transits of Earth-size planets orbiting in the "habitable zone" (HZ) around main-sequence stars of apparent visual magnitude 9 through 14, of F through...

  
• 02.18.2009

  01/14/2009 - Laboratory Studies of Water Ice Cloud formation under Martian Conditions

  Dr. Laura T. Iraci, NASA Ames Research Center Water ice clouds are an important part of the martian hydrological cycle, influencing the water and energy budgets. Microphysical models can be used to study the connections between cloud formation and water...

  
• 02.18.2009

  01/07/2009 - Mission to a Potentially Threatening Asteroid

  David Morrison, NASA Ames Research Center Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) are interesting to both planetary scientists and those who are concerned about protecting against their impacts. The first step, now well underway, is to find them (with the Spacegaurd Survey)....

  
• 02.18.2009

  12/03/2008 - The Weather on Mars

  David Hinson, SETI Institute In this talk Dave Hinson will examine the weather on Mars using a combination of radio occultation data and wide-angle images obtained by Mars Global Surveyor during its final year of operation. These complementary observations provide...

  
• 02.18.2009

  11/19/2008 - Some Thoughts from an Anthropologist on Culture, Interstellar Communication, and the Construction of Interstellar Messages

  Professor John Traphagan, Departments of Religious Studies and Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin “Culture” represents one of the most widely used, but often misunderstood, concepts when considering the nature of interactions and communications between different, and mutually alien, groups....

  
• 02.18.2009

  11/12/2008 - How Spaceflight Was Born

  Eugene LallyLally was involved with the space program from the beginning in the United States starting in 1955, before Sputnik. Eugene worked with key people from Peenemunde and JPL and contributed many pioneering concepts when he was referred to as...

  
• 02.18.2009

  09/10/2008 - Science in my life, and the unpredictability of discovery

  Professor Charles Townes, UC Berkeley (1964 Nobel Prize winner for Physics for the invention of the laser) Professor Townes is the 1964 Nobel prize winner for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction...

  
• 02.18.2009

  08/27/2008 - Exploring the Extreme Universe with GLAST

  Professor Lynn Cominsky, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Sonoma State University NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) mission was launched into orbit on June 11, 2008. GLAST's mission is to explore the most energetic and exotic objects in the...