In this week's #SETILive, Beth Johnson chatted with Dr. Bonnie Teece about her initial analysis of microbial traps left on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean near Axial Seamount and what they could mean for our search for life beyond Earth, especially involving ocean worlds like Europa and Enceladus.
The possibility that objects like Arrokoth can preserve their icy cores in such pristine conditions over billions of years could open up new avenues for better understanding the behavior and evolution of distant, icy bodies like comets and other KBOs.
“The key thing is that we corrected a deep error in the physical model people had been assuming for decades for these very cold and old objects,” said Orkan Umurhan, SETI Institute senior research scientist and co-author.
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/85XbEPjKXUc
This month, two teams of astronomers announced the potential discovery of Dyson spheres in our galaxy. But have we truly found indicators of highly advanced civilizations? Join Dr. Franck Marchis and Dr. Lauren Sgro as they delve into these groundbreaking findings and their implications for SETI research.
#PPOD: A massive storm, large enough to encompass most of North America, was spotted in Jupiter’s northern latitudes by NASA's Juno spacecraft on May 12. Juno is currently in its first extended mission and recently wrapped up close flybys of the Galilean moons Ganymede, Europa, and Io. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/ @kevinmgill
The newly detected 51-Sagittids shower reported last year from Global Meteor Network observations was visible in single night CAMS ( http://cams.seti.org/ ) data for May 14/15, 2024. The shower appears to be a weak annual shower from a yet-to-be-discovered long-period comet. The shower was also detected by CAMS in prior years.
Next #SETILive: Exploring Hydrothermal Vents
TODAY, May 23, 2:30 PM PDT
The InVADER project researches ways to improve life detection in ocean worlds by studying alien worlds in Earth’s deep ocean. Join Beth Johnson as she chats with Dr. Bonnie Teece about her initial analysis of ocean-floor microbial traps and what they could mean for our search for life beyond Earth, especially involving ocean worlds like Europa and Enceladus.
Dr. Franck Marchis, a planetary astronomer known for research on exoplanets and asteroids with moons, was awarded the Carl Sagan Center Director's Award. Marchis co-founded and is Chief Scientific Officer for Unistellar, fostering a global community of over 12,000 citizen astronomers. The evening also recognized Reed Spurling with the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Award of Excellence.
#PPOD: Enjoy this aesthetically stunning picture and consider the latitude at which it was captured. This is Portonovo (45N), a small town near Mount Conero in the province of Ancona in Italy. (We had it pretty good in San Francisco - 37N with purple and green). This low latitude tells you the strength of that solar storm that just hit. In fact, aurorae were observed in the Caribbean! Before May 12, only the Carrington Event reached those latitudes. Credit: Michele Elisei
Particle physics and cosmology go hand-in-hand, despite the vast difference in scales. So when something new starts brewing in the quantum world, we pay attention. On this week’s Big Picture Science - could physics experiments take us “Beyond the Standard Model?”
The SETI Institute’s 2024 Drake Awards ceremony took place last Thursday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, honoring significant contributions to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This event brought together experts in astrobiology, astrophysics, nuclear physics, and signal processing.
TONIGHT, May 22, 2024, at 7 pm (PDT), Dr. Robert Pappalardo (NASA Jet
Propulsion Lab) will give a free, illustrated, non-technical lecture entitled:
“Europa Clipper: Exploring Jupiter’s Ocean World"
#PPOD: Mimas drifts along in its orbit against the azure backdrop of Saturn's northern latitudes in this true-color view. The long, dark lines on the atmosphere are shadows cast by the planet's rings. At the bottom, craters on icy Mimas (398 kilometers) give the moon a dimpled appearance. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/CICLOPS
The American Philosophical Society is pleased to welcome new Members elected to the Society in 2024. Election to the American Philosophical Society honors extraordinary accomplishments in all fields. The APS is unusual among learned societies because its Membership is composed of top scholars from a wide variety of academic disciplines.
This year's cohort includes Dr. Jill Tarter, Bernard M. Oliver Endowed Chair Emeritus here at the SETI Institute.
This year, the SETI AIR program is launching a series of new residencies, each focused on a discipline, or “territory,” of creative practice. The first residency off the starting block is Cosmic Consciousness, which interweaves language and the written word with the exploration of consciousness and intelligence.
#PPOD: This stunning photo was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft. Phobos is the larger and closer of Mars's two moons, the other being Deimos. One hypothesis of their origin involves the possible capture of primitive asteroids. Unfortunately, Phobos is being pulled apart and closer by Mars's tidal forces and gravity. Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/ @andrealuck CC BY (https://www.flickr.com/photos/192271236@N03/53635851891/)