SETI Institute 40th Anniversary Panel: Looking Back to Look Ahead
Release Date: 11/26/2024
Chasing Martian Microbes: A New Technique for Finding Microbial Fossils in Minerals
SETI Live
A road trip to a gypsum quarry in Algeria led Youcef Sellam on a journey of scientific discovery. From the road trip to an internship in Italy, he and his colleagues later discovered microbial fossils—marking a first for Algerian gypsum. As a Ph.D. student at the University of Bern, Sellam and his team took this research further. They used a special instrument to detect the chemical signatures of these ancient microbes, demonstrating a method that could one day help search for traces of life on Mars. Their findings, published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, highlight how...
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Why is Mars Red? New Research Suggests Ferrihydrite is the Key
SETI Live
In a recent study, Dr. Janice Bishop of the SETI Institute, along with postdoctoral researcher Adomas Valantinas from Brown University, propose that Mars' characteristic red hue is primarily due to ferrihydrite—a water-rich iron oxide mineral—rather than the previously assumed hematite. Analyses of data collected by Martian orbiters, rovers, and laboratory experiments showed that ferrihydrite closely matches the composition of the dust covering Mars' surface. Ferrihydrite typically forms in environments abundant in cool water, suggesting Mars once had significant liquid water on its...
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The Climate Chronicles with Professor Dagomar Degroot
SETI Live
In The Climate Chronicles, a podcast with 42 episodes across eight seasons, Professor Dagomar Degroot of Georgetown University "takes you on a journey through 50 million years of climate change." He delves into how climate change has shaped civilizations—from the earliest hominid ancestors to the present era of rapid global warming. Through storytelling and historical analysis, he reveals the profound influence of climate on human societies. He explains how lessons from the past can help us navigate the challenges of today and tomorrow. Join communications specialist Beth Johnson for a...
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Super-Earth Laboratory: Using HD 20794 d to Understand Habitability
SETI Live
With over 7,000 exoplanets identified in our galaxy, scientists are shifting their focus to studying these worlds' characteristics in the quest for extraterrestrial life. The backdrop for one team is the discovery of super-Earth HD 20794 d, an exoplanet detected by researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and NCCR PlanetS. Orbiting in an eccentric path, HD 20794 d moves in and out of its star’s habitable zone, making it a compelling subject for further study. This breakthrough, built on two decades of observations with the world’s most advanced telescopes, has just been published...
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Amino Acids on Bennu! Building Blocks for Life Detected in Asteroid Bennu Samples
SETI Live
The OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) mission has been a resounding success, from taking a sample of asteroid Bennu to returning that sample to Earth. The first in-depth analysis of the space rocks is complete, and the results have been published in Nature and Nature Astronomy. One of the most intriguing results shows that 14 of the 20 amino acids life on Earth uses to form proteins have been found in the sample. This result supports the hypothesis that objects that formed farther from the Sun provided precursor ingredients...
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A PUNCH for the Sun: NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere
SETI Live
NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH mission, is a constellation of four small satellites in low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s corona to better understand how the mass and energy there become the solar wind that fills the solar system. Imaging the Sun’s corona and the solar wind together will help scientists better understand the entire inner heliosphere—the Sun, solar wind, and Earth—as a single connected system. Solar wind and energetic solar events like flares and coronal mass ejections can create space weather effects...
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Space is the Case: A Conversation with SETI Artist in Residence Martin Wilner
SETI Live
During his time as an Artist in Residence (AIR) at the SETI Institute, visual artist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst Martin Wilner invited prominent SETI Institute scientists to participate in his ongoing project, The Case Histories. Interested in exploring how scientists relate to the possibility of encountering an alien life form, Wilner invited researchers such as Jill Tarter, Seth Shostak, and Franck Marchis to send him daily messages and share thoughts of interest. These messages, filtered through the prism of psychoanalytical principles, were then transformed into drawings and...
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Looking for Lunar Anomalies Using Automated Methods
SETI Live
Over the past decade, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured thousands of high-resolution images of the Moon's surface—far more than humans can manually review. To tackle this challenge, scientists have developed an automated system that quickly identifies scientifically significant images from the LRO data, making it the first anomaly detector for planetary imagery. Experiments show that the system reliably highlights unusual features, such as striking geological formations and sites of human landings or spacecraft crashes. This approach fills a critical gap in planetary...
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Earth Detecting Earth: How Far Away Can We Detect Earth's Technosignatures?
SETI Live
If an extraterrestrial civilization existed with technology similar to ours, would they be able to detect Earth and evidence of humanity? If so, what signals would they detect, and from how far away? Researchers used a theoretical, modeling-based method, and this study is the first to analyze multiple types of technosignatures together rather than separately. The findings revealed that radio signals, such as planetary radar emissions from the former Arecibo Observatory, are Earth’s most detectable technosignatures, potentially visible from up to 12,000 light-years away. Join Simon Steel,...
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Unistellar + SETI: Citizen Science Q&A (Part 5)
SETI Live
Join Dr. Franck Marchis, Chief Science Officer and co-founder at Unistellar and director of Citizen Science at SETI Institute, and Dr. Lauren Sgro, Outreach Manager at the SETI Institute, for a conversation on citizen science with the Unistellar network in partnership with the SETI Institute. We review the 2024 citizen science accomplishments and discuss the 2025 campaigns so far. We will answer your questions about our program from the Unistellar community page and discuss some recent highlights. (Recorded 6 February 2025.)
info_outlineNearly 40 years ago, on November 20, 1984, the SETI Institute was incorporated with inaugural officers CEO Thomas Pierson and SETI scientist Jill Tarter. The goal was to provide SETI researchers with a place to grow the search for life beyond Earth. What began with one NASA-funded SETI project and two people has since grown to include over 100 researchers and various scientific areas of study, all seeking to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe. As a part of our outreach and education efforts, we grew our presence on the Internet, reaching out to a wide audience through our website, social media, and livestreams like SETI Live. We have education programs across all age ranges. We produce the weekly podcast Big Picture Science. And today, we celebrate all of these accomplishments and look forward to the next 40 years of science. Join host and senior planetary astronomer Franck Marchis as he chats with SETI Institute President and CEO Bill Diamond, senior astronomer and Big Picture Science co-host Seth Shostak, long-time Board of Directors member Andrew Fraknoi, and the Director of the Carl Sagan Center Nathalie Cabrol. (Recorded live 14 November 2024.)