October 22, 2018 9:44 pm

Join Dr. FunkySpoon in the Search for Technosignatures

Imagine yourself sifting through data, searching for signs of intelligent life in the universe. All of the sudden, you come across a radio signal that might be from an alien civilization. Could it be alien club music? (Well, that’s what Chuck thinks it might be.)

On this episode of StarTalk All-Stars, astrobiologist David Grinspoon, a.k.a. Dr. FunkySpoon, is back in the hosting seat alongside comic co-host Chuck Nice and first-time StarTalk All-Stars guest Sofia Sheikh. Sophia is a graduate student at Penn State University studying SETI, radio astronomy, astrobiology, and exoplanets and is here to help us understand the hunt for technosignatures.

One thing is for certain about the search for intelligent life – it raises more questions than it answers. What is intelligence, anyway? How do we constitute the boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and how precise is that boundary? Not to mention, “alien beavers” comes up in the conversation and we ponder the implications of finding a planet full of intelligent, alien beavers. Would we count that as a successful mission?

You’ll discover more about exoplanets and how they make the Drake equation a lot less uncertain. David and Sofia tell us how much of the universe we’ve really searched, and the answer might surprise you. Sofia also tells us how we look, where we look, and why cell phone interference can cause headaches. That being said, she explains how we distinguish alien signals from Earth signals just in case some are getting lost in the noise.

Tomorrow, we’ll also answer fan-submitted Cosmic Queries on a range of topics, from “Is it possible that civilizations are strategically hiding from us?” to “Is SETI searching for exotic exhaust trails left in wake of technically-advanced starships traversing interstellar or intergalactic space?”.

Explore what happens next in the event that we actually do receive an alien signal. You’ll find out if we’re searching for signals from civilizations that might not exist anymore, and we discuss the possibilities of an ancient, technologically-advanced civilization existing on Earth lost to the geological record. All that, plus, David and Sofia offer some advice to aspiring astrobiologists.

Please join us tomorrow night for Technosignatures: Detecting Alien Civilizations, with David Grinspoon at 7pm ET right here on our website, as well as on our All-Stars channels on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and TuneIn. And if you’re an All-Access subscriber, you can watch or listen to this episode ad-free at 7pm, too.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Ian Mullen