SETI Live

The new year has begun, and it's time for your favorite hosts - Franck Marchis and Beth Johnson - to run down some of the space science to look forward to in 2024. We will talk about launches, missions, celestial events (including a certain solar eclipse), and even SETI Institute's 40th anniversary. So come watch live and bring your questions!

For our last SETI Live of 2023, senior astronomer Seth Shostak and communications specialist Beth Johnson have fun chatting about the "science" behind Santa's overnight journey. How can he deliver presents so quickly? How do the reindeer fly? And just how did NORAD's Santa Tracker come about? Join the holiday shenanigans and watch live! (Recorded 21 December 2023.)

In a new study published in the Astronomical Journal, researchers used the known population of exoplanets to set better thresholds for planetary effects on signals from ETIs (extraterrestrial intelligences). Megan Grace Li, a Ph.D. student at UCLA in UCLA SETI, conducted this research as a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates intern in the Breakthrough Listen project at the Berkeley SETI Research Center.

Join Megan as she chats with Beth Johnson about her work and what it means for the future of SETI searches. (Recorded 30 November 2023.)

On Earth, we understand how and where earthquakes happen due to the discovery of plate tectonics – the continental crust's creation, movement, and destruction. However, when astronauts placed seismometers on the lunar surface during NASA's Apollo mission era, those instruments recorded quakes on the Moon. In the 1970s, the Viking landers also recorded quakes on the surface of Mars. Since neither of these worlds has plate tectonics, scientists set about collecting more data to understand the phenomena, which led to the recent NASA InSight lander. Now, a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters explains how the largest recorded seismic event on Mars provided evidence for a different sort of tectonic origin — the release of stress within the Martian crust.

Join communications specialist Beth Johnson as she talks to lead author Benjamin Fernando about the results of an amazing international collaboration that led to this new discovery. (Recorded 16 November 2023.)

The Universe is trying to kill us. We know an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, which was great for the rise of mammals, but how do we prevent a similar fate for humanity? Enter the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, NASA's first attempt at planetary defense by redirecting the orbit of an asteroid's moon. DART launched in November 2021, impacted Dimorphos in September 2022, and successfully changed the moonlet's orbit by 32 minutes. Since that successful test mission, the data from the impact and subsequent debris has been analyzed by countless teams worldwide. So what is next for planetary defense?

Join communications specialist Beth Johnson as she chats with scientist Dawn Graninger from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory about DART, follow-up mission Hera, and the future of saving the planet from near-Earth objects. (Recorded 2 November 2023.)

Look at a Moon atlas, and you'll see a land populated with the names of philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers. Great men like Plato, Aristarchus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Planck have been immortalized by naming Moon craters after them, cementing their names in the firmament. But – what about the women? Out of the 1,578 cataloged and named craters on the lunar surface, 32 are named after women – that is barely 2%. SETI Artist in Residence Program Director Bettina Forget found this percentage to be "disappointingly low", so she decided to highlight the issue through her artwork.

After researching the locations of the lunar craters named after women using data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Bettina created a series of 32 drawings on paper, using acrylic paint and graphite. Each drawing is a portrait of a crater, accentuating topographical features, textures, and shadowing. That project became even larger when Bettina began working on portraits of each crater using acrylic paint in vibrant shades of red and pink.

Now, three of those paintings are part of The Life Cycle of Celestial Objects exhibit at the McIntosh Gallery in London, Ontario. Join communications specialist Beth Johnson in a one-on-one discussion with Bettina about this visually stunning project in our monthly SETI AIR episode of SETI Live. (Recorded 26 October 2023.)

Led by Anicia Arredondo, researchers used the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) to investigate the metallic nature of the asteroid Psyche, believed to be rich in metals. SOFIA observed the entire surface of Psyche, using mid-infrared instruments to analyze its emissivity and porosity. The results confirmed that Psyche is a metallic body with some differences between the northern and southern poles. This study paves the way for NASA's mission to Psyche, launching in October 2023, promising insights into planetary cores and planet formation. Psyche's size and potential for differentiation make it a significant subject for understanding Earth-like planets. Join Anicia and SETI Institute senior astronomer Franck Marchis to learn more! (Recorded live19 October 2023.)

Launched on Sept. 8, 2016, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, spacecraft traveled to a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu (formerly 1999 RQ36) and collected a sample of rocks and dust from the surface. The spacecraft flew by Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, delivering the capsule containing the sample, which landed at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. Yesterday, NASA revealed the contents of the capsule live, and preliminary analysis revealed not only an abundance of space rocks in and around the capsule but also evidence of high-carbon content and water. Those findings and ones to come will help scientists investigate how planets formed and perhaps how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth.

Communications specialist Beth Johnson is joined by OSIRIS-Rex's principal investigator, Dante Lauretta. Join them in this special conversation about an amazing mission and what those space rocks have revealed and could further reveal. (Recorded 12 October 2020.)

Up until now, the quest to find evidence of active volcanism on other worlds has been limited to our own solar system. We've definitively seen volcanoes erupting on Jupiter's moon, Io; we've possibly found evidence of geologically recent volcanism on Venus; and Mars has the largest volcano, although dormant, in Olympus Mons. With the advent of the JWST era, however, more possibilities have opened up. Colby Ostberg is an astronomer at UC Riverside and the lead author of an intriguing recent study on terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres and their potential volcanic activities, focusing on the direct imaging of such exoplanets.

Dr. Franck Marchis and Colby discuss the results of the article, including the implication of volcanic activity on the color of an exoplanet and its atmospheric composition. Discover the future of exoplanetary science, where we're heading in our quest to understand these distant worlds, and how advances in technology and telescopic observations are bringing us closer to answers. (Recorded live on 5 October 2023.)

Preprint of the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.15972

The Apollo missions showed scientists that the craters on the Moon were from impacts rather than volcanoes, overturning previously held hypotheses. Now, new research using data collected by China's Chinese Chang'E 1 and 2 orbiters has discovered a hot spot under the surface. Using an instrument that made observations at microwave wavelengths, the team mapped out temperatures and found one particular suspected volcano, known as Compton-Belkovich, glowed in the microwave. However, surface evidence shows the volcano last erupted about 3.5 billion years ago, and the heat is coming from radioactive elements in the solid rock. That radioactivity led scientists to conclude that under the surface lies a large chunk of granite - magma that cooled underground - providing evidence for the most Earth-like volcanism found on the Moon to date.

Join planetary astronomer Franck Marchis as he discusses these interesting new findings with lead author Matt Siegler, Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. (Recorded live on 28 September 2023.)

Press release: https://www.psi.edu/blog/evidence-of-new-volcanic-process-on-moon-discovered-pr/