SETI Live

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.

Recorded live 6 July 2023.

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 antenna using pulsars. NANOGrav's endeavor involved collecting data from 68 pulsars, fashioning a pulsar timing array—a distinctive type of detector.

In 2020, with over a decade of data, NANOGrav scientists detected hints of an additional enigmatic "hum" in the timing behavior of all the pulsars in their array. After exploring alternative explanations, they grew confident in the authenticity of this signal. Its detection became increasingly feasible with more extensive observations. However, at that stage, the gravitational-wave signature predicted by general relativity remained too faint to emerge. After fifteen years of pulsar observations, the evidence of gravitational waves, with periods spanning years to decades, emerges prominently.

Join Simon Steel, Deputy Director of the Carl Sagan Center, as he discusses this groundbreaking research with NANOGrav team member and SETI Institute researcher Dr. Michael Lam.

Press release: https://www.seti.org/press-release/nanogravs-15-year-journey-reveals-cosmic-hum

Recorded live 29 June 2023

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 deep. That ocean is warmed via tidal heating, and plumes of water vapor escape through cracks in the surface.

Enter the Cassini mission, which spent over 13 years orbiting Saturn, collecting data on the gas giant, the rings, and various moons, including Enceladus. The spacecraft even flew through the plumes, using instruments such as the ion and neutral mass spectrometer (INMS) and the cosmic dust analyzer (CDA) to directly sample the material. Over the years, five of the six elements considered to be the building blocks for life as we know it - carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur - have been found within those ice grains. The recent discovery of the sixth element, in the form of phosphates, not only completes the set but provides an ingredient necessary for the creation of DNA and RNA.

While the discovery is not evidence of life on Enceladus, the potential for life in that subsurface ocean continues to grow. Please join lead author Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at Freie Universität Berlin, and SETI Institute senior scientist Franck Marchis as they discuss the impact of this discovery, the deeper meaning for the search for life beyond Earth, and what's next for the research.

Press releases: https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/presse/informationen/fup/2023/fup_23_137-saturnmond-enceladus-ozean-phosphate/index.html

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-cassini-data-reveals-building-block-for-life-in-enceladus-ocean

https://www.swri.org/press-release/key-building-block-life-found-saturn-moon-enceladus

Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05987-9

Recorded 22 June 2023

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 integrity of scientific research as well as life here on Earth when crews return? Hosted by Dr. Simon Steel, Deputy Director of the SETI Institute's Carl Sagan Center.

Read more about the comment at seti.org: https://bit.ly/43WGnNU

Recorded 13 June 2023.

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 Live. Mike and Franck will discuss the significance of this discovery and the implications for astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial life as it connects cometary bodies and the delivery of water and organic molecules to Earth.

Press release: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-123

Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06152-y

Recorded live 8 June 2023.

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 and more affordably than ever.

Join communications specialist Beth Johnson as she chats with SETI Institute research scientist and project lead Pablo Sobron about this new mission and the future of remote sensing.

Press release: https://www.seti.org/press-release/invader-mission-test-its-robotic-laser-divebot-deep-sea-expedition

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.

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 ultimately led to the formation of life, called prebiotic chemistry.

Join Dragonfly Deputy PI and DRaMS instrument lead Melissa Trainer in a conversation with communications specialist Beth Johnson, as they discuss this upcoming mission and the potential science discoveries DRaMS could bring. Recorded on 13 April 2023.

More information: https://www.nasa.gov/dragonfly

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 discovered a volcanic vent that had grown and changed shape in that time period.

Join co-author Robert Herrick from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and communications specialist Beth Johnson as they discuss how the discovery was made, how it changes what we know of Venus, and what the new information could mean for future Venus missions. (Recorded live on 6 April 2023.

Paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm7735

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-1452 b orbits a red dwarf star within its Habitable Zone, an area where there is a possibility of liquid water on the planet's surface, given the presence of a protective atmosphere. Although scientists have some understanding of TOI-1452 b's characteristics, there is still a great deal of uncertainty surrounding this newly discovered world.

The Exotopia expedition will explore this enigma and offer travelers the opportunity to illustrate their own adventure using AI-generated art. Join us as we discuss the unique confluence of astronomy, art, sci-fi, and AI technology related to this distinctive storytelling experience.