Seminar and Journal Club

Joseph Bates
April 27, 2023
Zoom recording

Abstract:
It is practical today to build billion-core computing systems for dedicated use by individual academic research centers. This is a radical development that enables open research communities to do very advanced computational science. We sketch the hardware and software involved, which are based on approximate computing and spatial computing, and invite discussion of consequences, especially for SETI.

Pierre Estienne
March 30, 2023
Zoom recording

Abstract:
In this talk, I’ll briefly introduce how image-forming sensory modalities, neurons, and centralized brains have evolved multiple times on Earth, and will detail my PhD work on the convergent evolution of tool use in mammals, birds, and fishes. By studying the brains of tool-using fishes of the wrasse family, we found that they presented unique connectivity patterns that differed from non tool-using fishes. In particular, abundant connectivity was found in tool-using fishes between the pallium, a structure analogous to the mammalian neocortex, and the inferior lobe, a structure that only exists in fishes. Strikingly, the brains of tool-using fishes are organized very differently from other tool-using vertebrates like crows or primates. Our results indicate that vertebrate brains are evolutionarily very plastic and that similar behaviors can be produced by brain structures that have evolved independently. All in all, this work supports the idea that intelligence, demonstrated by behaviors like tool use, seems to be a robustly replicable ability that could easily evolve given certain conditions.

Paul Davies
March 23, 2023
Zoom recording

Abstract:
Is the transition from non-life to life a bizarre chemical fluke or an expected part of intrinsically biofriendly laws of nature – a ‘cosmic imperative’? SETI enthusiasts assume that latter – that life will pop up inevitably in earthlike conditions. Does that mean life should have emerged many time on Earth? How do we know it didn’t? Has anybody looked? I will discuss the concept of multiple terrestrial geneses and ask whether descendants from another genesis might still lurk in the biosphere today.

Hector Socas-Navarro
March 16, 2023
Zoom recording

Abstract:
As a byproduct of the exoplanet revolution, we can now search for technosignatures that would potentially leave an imprint on a planet’s transit light-curve data. We can now examine the space environment around a planet in search for artificial megastructures or large collections of artifacts, such as satellite belts. This talk summarizes some possible technosignatures that might be within the reach of current or upcoming instrumentation, with emphasis on photometric technosignatures and how they can be categorized in the axes of merit or the ichnoscale diagram may be used to provide a quantitative framework. Specifically, we will focus on geosynchronous artifacts, such as Clarke exobelts, which have desirable characteristics including compatibility with Occam’s razor, being a natural extension of current human technology, and a lifespan of at least millions of years.

Michael Garrett
March 2, 2023
Zoom recording

Abstract:
I will present some of the SETI research results and teaching activities I have been leading at the University of Manchester, UK, over the last few years. In terms of research, the focus has been on four main activities: (i) placing new constraints on the prevalence of extraterrestrial transmitters in the Milky Way and beyond by taking into account both foreground and break ground stars/galaxies surveyed by the Breakthrough Listen programme (Wlodarczyk-Sroka set al. 2020, Garrett & Siemion 2022) (ii) recent progress in SETI follow-up observations using long-baseline interferometers (Wandia et al. 2023 submitted), (iii) simulations of Earth radio leakage associated with growing mobile communication systems (Saide et al. 2023) and (iv) searching for Kardashev Type III civilisations via extreme outliers in the radio-MIR correlation (Chen & Garrett 2021). With respect to teaching, we have been running an interdisciplinary, under-graduate course at Manchester: “Are We Alone ?” – The Search for Extraterrestrial Life. This attracts students from all faculties, covering a wide range of different astrophysical, biological, social and cultural topics associated with SETI.

Connor Martini
February 16, 2023
Zoom recording

Abstract:
When we talk about the relationship between science and religion, we tend to get bogged down in controversies and conflicts between Christian theologians and secular scientists—the Scopes Trial, Intelligent Design, etc. But there are other stories to be told about religion and science, stories that are not conciliatory just for the sake of minimizing instances of genuine discord but which serve to highlight the questions that bounce back and forth across the porous boundaries between religion and science and the complex human actors who ask them. These stories become infinitely easier to tell when we allow for “religion” to mean other things besides Christianity and “science” to be more than evolutionary biology. The telling of this story, instead, will attempt to trace a series of questions and concerns though upstate New York in the mid-19th Century, through New Orleans during the Civil War, through the advent of radio telescopes and the genesis of SETI. These questions and concerns look to the horizon of human technological development with a spirit of curiosity and possibility: what is it that we do not know, and what might our tools permit us to hear?

Malcolm MacIver
February 2, 2023
Zoom recording

Abstract:
In this talk I’ll detail some results from our group on how visual systems changed at the water to land transition 380 million years ago. I’ll use that work to motivate a series of simulation studies on whether the 10x increase in relative brain size found in terrestrial endotherms (birds, mammals) can be informed by the need to master terrestrial environments through an enhanced ability to plan and learn. I’ll also touch on preliminary data from a new set of studies in the lab that tests some of these ideas by way of a large spatially complex apparatus where mice are pursued by an autonomous robot ‘predator’ (using air puffs as the aversive stimulus).

Sara Walker
December 8, 2022

Abstract:
Most of our efforts to search for life beyond Earth are anthropocentrically biased – that is they focus on features that have evolved on Earth as analogous to what we might find in alien examples. In this talk, I will discuss whether we can even imagine the possibility space for alien life, and if we can, how we might predict its properties. The discussion is based on recent advances in developing theories, or laws, for universal features of life that suggest some new viewpoints on the problem of alien intelligences.

David Shorter
December 1, 2022
Zoom recording

Description:
Shorter will discuss how the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life remains mostly grounded in a hierarchical and progressivist worldview that has fueled colonialism throughout history. Shorter’s recent work has demonstrated how previous earthly explorations produced a covering over rather than a discovery of others. For Shorter, these histories must be considered by those working in SETI-related fields. To truly represent an endeavor on behalf of “humanity,” much more needs to be done to include others in the process of determining what counts as life, what counts as intelligence, and engagement with Indigenous Studies scholarship to reach a genuine frontier, a metaparadigm shift beyond object-orientated scientific methods, a key component of what the Shorter calls “settler science.”

Sofia Sheikh
November 17, 2022
Zoom recording

Abstract:
The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) is a 42-dish radio array in Hat Creek, California, operated by the SETI Institute. For the last few years, the ATA has been undergoing a refurbishment program, and the instrument is now exiting its commissioning stage and commencing science observations with a 20-element beamformer outfitted with upgraded feeds. In this presentation, a follow-up to Dr. Wael Farah’s ATA instrumentation talk from a few weeks ago, I will summarize current science programs at the ATA, including radio technosignature / Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) surveys, long-term pulsar scintillation monitoring, observations of repeating Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) environment characterization, and follow-up radio counterpart observations for transients such as Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs).