Life After Ice: 46,000-Year-Old Worms Wake Up
SETI Live
In this SETI Live episode, host Simon Steel (Deputy Director of the Carl Sagan Center) chats with evolutionary biologist Philipp Schiffer (Worm Lab) about one of the most astonishing discoveries in modern biology: scientists have revived a microscopic worm that had been frozen in Siberian permafrost for roughly 46,000 years. These nematodes entered a state of cryptobiosis — a kind of biological “pause” — and came back to life when gently thawed in the lab. They didn’t just wiggle; they fed, reproduced, and gave us a window into life’s extreme resilience. Simon and Philipp dive into...
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SETI@home Update: 21 Years of Citizen Science—and 100 Signals to Investigate
SETI Live
For more than two decades, millions of volunteers turned their home computers into a planet-scale telescope, donating idle processing power to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence through SETI@home. That effort ended in 2020—but the data never stopped speaking. Now, UC Berkeley scientists have taken a fresh, rigorous look at the vast SETI@home archive and identified around 100 intriguing signals that warrant closer scrutiny. In this SETI Live, host Beth Johnson is joined by Eric Korpela (UC Berkeley), one of the scientists behind the original SETI@home project and the new analyses....
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When Galaxies Collide: Euclid Reveals What Triggers Active Black Holes
SETI Live
Using early data from the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope, astronomers have analyzed over one million galaxies to test a long-standing idea in astrophysics: that galaxy mergers help trigger the growth of supermassive black holes. In this SETI Live, host Dr. Moiya McTier will explore two new Euclid studies that combine vast sky surveys, machine learning, and multi-wavelength observations to uncover when and why active galactic nuclei (AGN) ignite. The results show that galaxies in the midst of mergers are far more likely to host actively feeding black holes — and that the...
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What to Expect in Space Science 2026
SETI Live
2026 is a pivotal year for space science. From humans returning to the Moon to new telescopes opening more expansive windows on the universe, this year marks a turning point in how we explore space—and why it matters. SETI Institute communications specialist Beth Johnson and Senior Planetary Astronomer Franck Marchis will tour the biggest missions, milestones, and moments shaping space science in 2026. We’ll look at crewed lunar exploration, robotic missions to asteroids and planets, next-generation observatories, and the celestial events unfolding above our own skies. Along the way,...
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3I/ATLAS: Caught in UV | What Europa Clipper Saw When No One Else Could
SETI Live
We’re going live with Dr. Cynthia Phillips, Europa Clipper Project Staff Scientist and Science Communications Lead, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to explore a surprising and exciting new chapter in comet science. Recently, the Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft made unique observations of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS at a time when Earth- and Mars-based telescopes couldn’t see it. In this livestream, communications specialist Beth Johnson and Dr. Phillips will unpack what these observations mean for our understanding of interstellar...
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Earth 2.0? Maybe Not. Intelligent Life Might Be Far Rarer Than We Think
SETI Live
Get ready for a fascinating deep dive into one of the biggest questions in astrobiology: How common are biological extraterrestrial intelligences in the Milky Way? Host Simon Steel, Deputy Director of the Carl Sagan Center for Research, is joined by Manuel Scherf and Helmut Lammer (Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences) to explore new research that challenges long-held assumptions about “Earth-like” planets and what it really takes for a world to support complex life. Recent work from Scherf, Lammer, and colleagues revisits the idea of Eta-Earth — the number of truly...
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SkyMapper: Map All the Sky, All the Time
SETI Live
In a special bonus SETI Live, communication specialist Beth Johnson welcomes astronomer and entrepreneur Franck Marchis to introduce SkyMapper, a new global network of smart telescopes and all-sky sensors designed to open the universe to everyone. SkyMapper brings together professional observatories, citizen astronomers, and classrooms into a single, decentralized platform. It enables real scientific discovery — from tracking satellites and meteors to monitoring comets and transient events in real time — while giving students and the public the chance to observe the sky, contribute data,...
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Baby Moons in the Making? The Discovery of a Moon-Forming Disk
SETI Live
On this episode of SETI Live, host Moiya McTier welcomes two leading researchers—Gabriele Cugno (University of Zürich) & Sierra L. Grant (Carnegie Institution for Science)—to dive into an extraordinary discovery by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a carbon-rich, moon-forming disk around the distant exoplanetary object CT Cha b, some 625 light-years away. What exactly is a “moon-forming disk”? Why is this discovery a game-changer for our understanding of how moons — and ultimately habitable environments around them — can form? Gabriele and Sierra walk us through...
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The Moon that Could Support Life: What Cassini Discovered Beneath the Ice of Enceladus
SETI Live
Join host Beth Johnson for a fascinating episode of SETI Live, featuring planetary scientists Dr Georgina Miles and Dr Carly Howett from the University of Oxford. We’ll be unpacking their groundbreaking study showing that Enceladus — one of Saturn’s icy moons — may harbor a stable subsurface ocean capable of supporting life. 📄 For more info: The study “Endogenic heat at Enceladus’ north pole” has just been published in Science Advances: Official press release from the University of Oxford: (Recorded live 20 November 2025.)
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Where Water Boils the Sky: Steam Worlds and the Search for Life
SETI Live
What happens when a planet is full of water—but too hot for oceans? Meet the “steam worlds,” exotic exoplanets wrapped in thick water vapor and boiling at thousands of degrees. These strange worlds may be far from habitable, but they’re reshaping how scientists think about planets, water, and where life might exist. In this episode of SETI Live, host Beth Johnson talks with Artem Aguichine of the University of California, Santa Cruz, about his new research modeling the interiors and atmospheres of steam worlds—a class of water-rich sub-Neptunes that could dominate our galaxy. With...
info_outline2026 is a pivotal year for space science. From humans returning to the Moon to new telescopes opening more expansive windows on the universe, this year marks a turning point in how we explore space—and why it matters. SETI Institute communications specialist Beth Johnson and Senior Planetary Astronomer Franck Marchis will tour the biggest missions, milestones, and moments shaping space science in 2026. We’ll look at crewed lunar exploration, robotic missions to asteroids and planets, next-generation observatories, and the celestial events unfolding above our own skies. Along the way, we’ll talk about what these missions are designed to discover, the questions they’re trying to answer, and how they fit into the bigger story of humanity’s search to understand our place in the cosmos. Whether you follow every launch or love looking up at the night sky, this episode will connect the dots between ambitious engineering, fundamental science, and the sense of wonder that keeps us exploring. (Recorded live 8 January 2026.)