The Wow! Signal Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Interview recorded: 11 July 2021

Released: 16 July 2021

Duration: 21 minutes, 33 seconds

Beatriz Villarroel discusses her latest VASCO paper in Nature Scientific Reports, "Exploring nine simultaneously occurring transients on April 12th 1950."

Links:

Villarroel+ , Exploring Nine simultaneously occurring transients on April 12th 1950.

Burst 19: Our Sky Now and Then (August 2016)

Episode 41: The Vanishing Sources with Beatriz Villarroel (November 2019)

The Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations project: I. USNO objects missing in modern sky surveys and follow-up observations of a "missing star

The Palomar Digital Sky Survey

Gran Telescopio Canarias

The United States Nuclear Testing Program

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Ahleuchatistas and Erika Lloyd

 

 

Released: 4 February 2021

Duration: 58 minutes 44 seconds

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.

Guest Bio:

I am a writer and researcher from the UK. In 2019, I completed a PhD at Oriel College on the history of human extinction. Currently, I am a visiting Research Associate in History at St Benet's College, Oxford University, and I am working for Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute with a grant from the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative. 
 
I am interested in the history of existential risk and of existential hope: that is, how people first came to understand the perils and promises that face us as a species. I see this as the central philosophical drama of the modern world: how we came to appreciate our position—and precarity—as intelligent beings within an otherwise seemingly silent and sterile universe. 
 
My goal is to reveal how contemporary research into global risks can be seen as part of the wider story of our ‘coming of age’ as a civilisation and a species.

Links:

Thomas Moynihan - https://thomasmoynihan.xyz

X-Risk at MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/x-risk

Mary Shelley - The Last Man

Churchill - Shall We All Commit Suicide?

The Order of the Dolphin

Frank Drakę: A Speculation on the Influence of Biological Immortality on SETI

Natural Selection of Stellar Civilizations by the Limits of Growth

The Jaws of Darkness

The Ethics of METI

Credits:

Co-hosts: Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis

Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Solar Arkestra, DJ Spooky

Released: 15 November 2019

Duration: 42 minutes, 24 seconds

Our guest on Burst 19 in 2016, Dr. Beatriz Villarroel, returns to give us an update on the vanishing star, following the release of a new paper detailing a much more ambitious project along the same lines that finds a number of new candidate objects.

For more information, please visit https://wowsignalpodcast.com

Links:

Burst 19: Our Sky Now and Then

Villarroel+: The Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations project: I. USNO objects missing in modern sky surveys and follow-up observations of a "missing star"

The POSS-I Survey

Pan-STARRS

Chasing Disclosure (work of fiction that mentions the earlier research)

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: DJ Spooky and Jason Robinson

Announcer: Erin Carr

This podcast is released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike license.

Released: 16 October 2019

Duration: 54 minutes, 51 seconds

 

Interstellar Languages is a forthcoming book about the human quest to craft messages that can be understood across interstellar distances. We may want to tell ET about  ourselves, or it may be help ET send message to us that we will know how to interpret.

Daniel Oberhaus is a staff writer at Wired Magazine, where he covers space and energy. His first book, Extraterrestrial Languages, will be released by MIT Press on October 22, 2019. 

For more information, please visit wowsignalpodcast.com

Support the podcast at Patreon.com.

Links

MIT Press Page for Interstellar Languages

Daniela DePaulis

The 2017 Sonar message 

There is Here

The Risks of METI and Religious Aliens

The Question: the ontological status of mathematics

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Co-Host: Daniela DiPaulis

Music: DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson, George Hrab

Announcer: Erin Carr

 

The Wow! Signal is released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license

Released: 29 September 2019

Duration: 49 minutes, 52 seconds

Download Sofia's paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.02683

A conversation with SETI researcher Sofia Sheikh about how we should evaluate technosignature search strategies. We cover three examples of technosignature searches and their relative advantages.

Sofia Sheikh is a third-year graduate student at the Pennsylvania State University working with Dr. Jason Wright. She did her undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, where she became involved with the Breakthrough Listen Initiative. Her work incorporates both theoretical approaches to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and observational radio searches for technosignatures. She intends to be the first woman to complete a SETI PhD thesis.

Links

The Nine Axes of Merit

Andrew Siemion on SETI at the SKA 

Breakthrough Listen

The Truth about Alien Megastructures

Sonar Calling GJ273B

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Announcer: Erin Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, Erika Lloyd, Jason Robinson

Hardware: Shure, Audio Technica, Pro Art, Behringer, Focusrite, Apple.

Software: Skype, Loopback, Reaper, Auphonic Desktop

Hosting: Libsyn

 

Released: 18 February 2019

Duration: 6 minutes, 48 seconds

 

Paul Carr summarizes why we want to know more about this star, and how you can get involved.

Links:

Please see wowsignalpodcast.com for the most detailed information.

The Most Mysterious Star in the Universe (Tabby's TED Talk)

Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 1

The Slow and Fast Dimming of Tabby's Star (Brad Schaefer)

Ben Montet Makes a Star Weirder

 

The KIC8462852_Analysis subreddit

 

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: DJ Spooky

Released: 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

 Predictably, online media go nuts over ‘Oumuamua and Harvard scientists; “Scientists are perfectly happy to publish an outlandish idea.” by Eric Berger

Breakthrough Starshot 

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

A not quite so short announcement from the producer of the Unseen Podcast and the Wow! Signal. This is for those who have not seen the video.

 

Unseen Podcast Episode Planning Sheet

Released: 24 April 2018

Duration: 10 minutes, 1 second

 

Paul Carr talks about today's much more accurate distance estimate to Boyajian's Star from Gaia Data Release 2, and what, if anything, this rules out.

 

Links:

Clemens+ (2018) - Proper Motion of the Faint Star near KIC 8462852 (Boyajian's Star) - Not a Binary System

Boyajian+ (2015) - Where's the Flux?

Interview with Brad Schaefer

Ben Montet Makes a Star Weirder

Castelaz and Barker (2018) - KIC 8462852: Maria Mitchell Observatory Photographic Photometry 1922 to 1991

Gaia DR2

 

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson

 

Released: 23 April 2018

Duration:12 minutes, 21 seconds

 

Paul Carr reviews what has been happening over the Winter and early Spring with respect to Boyajian's Star. We review the Winter observations, the Castelaz and Barker paper, and the two surprise March dips, Caral-Supe and Evangeline. We also talk about the upcoming Gaia Data Release 2 and what it might mean.

 

Links

Burst 24 and Burst 25

KIC 8462852: Maria Mitchell Observatory Photographic Photometry 1922 to 1991

Where's The Flux?

Bruce Gary's Boyajian's Star Page

Boyajian's R

Gaia DR2

 

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Jason Robinson