Post-detection for the 2020s: fundamentals, current concerns, and new discussions
Led by Kathryn Denning, Brian McConnell, Rebecca Charbonneau, Chelsea Haramia, George Profitiolitis
Additional presenters: Jill Tarter, Shelley Wright
1:00-3:00pm Monday, Wednesday, & Thursday
Full program here
Brief description: Post-detection is a topic of perennial importance in SETI, and certainly a hot topic today. Our intention in this session is to foster inclusive, interdisciplinary discussion about post-detection challenges in the 2020s, focusing on policy, public communication, and scientific responsibility in the different detection scenarios that are possible today and in the near future. Combining our perspectives as researchers from multiple different fields, we aim to facilitate conversations about post-detection concerns, being mindful of the participation of researchers and students of different career stages, different disciplinary backgrounds, and with varying degrees of practical familiarity with technosignatures research. We further hope that engaging in an ‘active philosophy’ discussion (Part 2) and exploratory foresight exercise (Part 3) will demonstrate to participants how these different methods cultivate insights and generate useful understandings. n.b. A caveat: post-detection is a matter of international significance and although it is certainly important to explore post-detection at this symposium, it is not the place/time for definitive decisions about policy etc.
In Search of (Techno-Bio) Signatures from the Light of the Past in the Present and Beyond
Led by Michele Mekel, Lauren Stetz, Karen Keifer-Boyd, and Matthew Lamb
1:00-3:00pm Monday, Wednesday, & Thursday
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) tends to focus exclusively on the hard sciences in terms of research and methodology. However, the lenses of art, bioethics, communication arts and sciences, education, and the humanities offer invaluable tools imperative to the success of this effort. To that end, this interactive, post-detection workshop series, spanning three days of the conference during the breakout session portion, offers in-depth exploration, engagement, creation, and dialogue.
Centered around communicating with our cosmic neighbors and the bioethical and social implications such communications raise, questions to be investigated include (but are not limited to):
- Who speaks for Earth?
- What should be communicated?
- What can be communicated?
- How can it be communicated—recognizing similarities, as well as differences?
The interactive, creative, and deliberative format of this breakout session series will utilize participatory action research that embraces relational humility to:
- tap into the human imagination, which fills impossible spaces with possibilities; and
- enable new ecologies of epistemology to emerge, challenging ingrained ways of knowing.
Sessions will feature short expert presentations in art/art education, bioethics, communication arts and sciences, and the humanities as jumping off points for discussion and knowledge creation. The capsule talks will investigate (among other issues):
- visual culture and the history of representing the “other” or the “alien”;
- definitional issues connected with conceptualizations of “alien” and “foreign”; and
- bioethical inquiry into narrative ethics and systemic injustice.
Opportunities for Technosignature Science in the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey
Led by Jacob Haqq Misra
1:00-3:00pm Monday & Thursday
The “Origins, Worlds, and Life” decadal report outlines numerous recommendations for the exploration of the Solar System that could also advance technosignature science. This breakout session is an opportunity to brainstorm possibilities for connecting technosignature science objectives with the capabilities of missions recommended in this report. The first day will be a group brainstorming session to identify the broad categories and mission concepts that are relevant to technosignatures. The second day will involved smaller groups of participants drafting text to describe the connection between technosignatures and planetary science for each of these broad categories. This topic is open to all participants and would benefit best from participation by those with expertise in planetary science. This topic is appropriate for the symposium because it will seek to broaden recognition of technosignature science by astronomers who study the solar system.
How to collaborate with Breakthrough Listen and SETI Institute
Led by Vishal Gajjar, Karen Perez and Andrew Siemion
1:00-3:00pm Wednesday
Breakthrough Listen:
Breakthrough Listen (BL) is a US $100M project to search for evidence of intelligent life.
BL is employing around half-a-dozen radio observatories around the globe to carry out unique SETI experiments. In this breakout session, we will outline possible collaboration opportunities across all these facilities with a special focus on the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). BL has deployed a state-of-the-art GPU-equipped 64-node compute cluster at the GBT. This backend is available on a shared risk basis for around 50-hours of observations per semester. In this breakout session, we will discuss the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) proposal submission procedure and explain how anyone can submit a proposal for doing SETI with the GBT using the Breakthrough Listen backend. Following is a tentative list of topics we will be covering.
- Introduction to the Breakthrough Listen digital backend at the GBT
- NRAO proposal submission portal and proposal preparation
- Getting data from the telescope and BL data products
- Introduction to radio SETI analysis tools (Discussion lead Karen Perez)
- Hands-on tutorial to analyze real observations (Discussion lead Karen Perez)
SETI Institute:
The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit research organization dedicated to finding life in the Universe. Along with over 100 researchers, the institute operates the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), Optical Laser SETI programs, and new commensal systems on the Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) in New Mexico and the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa. In this breakout session, we will discuss possible upcoming collaboration opportunities on the Allen Telescope Array and the new Commensal observing cluster (COSMIC) on the JVLA. The following tentative topics will be discussed.
- Introduction to COSMIC and the VLA
- Introduction to the ATA
- The status of the project and plans for COSMIC (Summary from Savin’s full talk).
- Observing with the ATA
- How we envision the community to get involved.