Profs and Pints Online presents: “The Search for Alien Life,” with Jason Wright, professor of astronomy and astrophysics and director of the Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center at Pennsylvania State University.

[This talk will remain available in recorded form at the link used here for tickets and access.]

What will our first encounter with alien life be like? Will it be dangerous?

Come hear such questions tackled by a scientist at the leading edge of the search for extraterrestrial life, especially intelligent life that can produce technology like—or perhaps very unlike—our own.

Professor Jason Wright, who is also the acting director of Penn State’s Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, has spent the last six years developing and improving searches for alien life. In an interactive, online talk he’ll review some of the early and recent attempts to get the attention of others out there, and he’ll discuss the development of SETI—the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence—to scan the skies for signs of communication.

We’ll get an insider’s perspective on how our fellow humans on earth respond to such research, looking at why some people think the whole effort is a waste of time at best and an existential threat to the Earth at worst. Along the way we'll learn exactly what we do and don't know about “alien megastructures,” learn about the history of sending messages into space and the question of whether doing so is dangerous, examine how sci-fi influences how we think of extraterrestrial life, and tackle the question of how we can even possibly look for life if it exists in some form we know nothing about.

Among other topics he’ll touch upon, Professor Wright will review some famous false alarms of alien life, and discuss his own behind-the-scenes experience with a big one, over the enigmatic celestial object known as “Tabby's Star.”

We’ll have lofty scientific research about the great unknowns of the universe brought down to earth for the rest of us. You’ll end up feeling like you’ve gone on a fantastic intellectual journey.

Profs & Pints Online: The Search for Alien Life