Burst 34 - The Mystery of the Nine Transients
The Wow! Signal Podcast
Beatriz Villarroel discusses her latest VASCO paper in Nature Scientific Reports, "Exploring nine simultaneously occurring transients on April 12th 1950."
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Episode 49 - Existential Risk
The Wow! Signal Podcast
Co-hosts Paul Carr and Daniela DePaulis are joined by author Thomas Moynihan. The subject is the idea of human extinction and how it evolved into our present day understand of Existential Risk.
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Episode 48 - Chelsea Haramia on the Ethics of METI
The Wow! Signal Podcast
Co-hosts Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis engage philosopher Chelsea Haramia on the ethics of sending signals into space that might be received by intelligent beings in the cosmos.
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Episode 47 - Arthur C. Clarke, Godfather of Satellites
The Wow! Signal Podcast
Co hosts Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis welcome space historian David Skogerboe to talk about the pro-space activism of Arthur C. Clarke.
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Episode 46 - Extraterrestrials
The Wow! Signal Podcast
Author and podcaster Wade Roush talks about his forthcoming book from MIT Press, Extraterrestrials. The book covers astrobiology, SETI, the Fermi paradox and more for a literate but non-specialist audience.
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Episode 45 - Among the Space People with Paola Castaño
The Wow! Signal Podcast
Co-hosts Paul Carr and Daniela DePaulis welcome Dr. Paola Castaño to talk about her research among the science teams working on the international Space Station.
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Burst 33 - Astronomer David Blank Comments on Episode 41
The Wow! Signal Podcast
Astronomer David Blank responded to our invitation to comment on the Villarroel+ paper we covered in Episode 41, which he describes as "very fascinating."
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Episode 44 - The Night Watch
The Wow! Signal Podcast
Astronomer Stella Kafka of the AAVSO
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Episode 43 - Adam Dipert Moves in Zero G
The Wow! Signal Podcast
Adam Dipert is a veteran circus performer and dancer who recently received his PhD in physics from Arizona State University. Her has brought his various interests together by researching human movement in microgravity. We are going to let him tell you all about that.
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Episode 42 - Moon bouncing with Julia DeMarines
The Wow! Signal Podcast
Co-hosts Daniela DePaulis and Paul Carr welcome Julia DeMarines (@LifeNSpace) to talk about bouncing radio signals off the moon.
info_outlineReleased: 10 February 2019
Duration: 16 Minutes, 51 Seconds
Abraham Loeb and Shmuel Bialy kicked up a kerfuffle when they wrote a paper suggesting that one possible explanation for ‘Oumuamua was that it could be an artificial object, in other words, an alien spacecraft—specifically, a lightsail. The two have been praised for their boldness and condemned for their recklessness, but little has been said concerning the possibility of detecting a lightsail as a technosignature in comparison to detecting a “conventional” technosignature such as the radio and laser beacons that SETI searches for. When we look out into the universe for signs of intelligence, if there are technosignatures to be seen, what technologies ought we to expect to be the most common?
Links
Stagnant Supercivilizations and Interstellar Travel
“Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain ‘Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?” Bialy and Loeb
lightsail (Wikipedia)
The Interstellar Age: The Story of the NASA Men and Women Who Flew the Forty-Year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell
NASA Voyager 2 Could Be Nearing Interstellar Space
The Great Filter—Are We Almost Past It? by Robin Hanson
SETI as a Process of Elimination
Credits
Written and Presented by: Nick Nielsen
Postproduction: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky
This podcast episode is released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license