Jill Tarter – Proxima Centauri, the Drake Equation, and SETI in 2021! (#103)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2020

⏱️ 65 minutes

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Summary

Last week the Guardian and Scientific American announced that Breakthrough Listen astronomers using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia saw a weird radio signal coming from Proxima Centauri, the star system closest to Earth. The signal behaves strangely, only using a narrow 982MHz band typically not used by human-made spacecraft. It also does not correspond to known natural processes. The frequency moves around too…not what you’d expect from a planet. As soon as I heard about it, I knew I had to talk to my friend, Jill Tarter! Check out the biography of Jill (Making Contact) here: https://amzn.to/2M22Bv5 Please consider donating to the SETI Institute: https://www.seti.org Watch Jill’s TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EszGIvRdgTE Brian Keating’s most popular Youtube Videos: Eric Weinstein: https://youtu.be/YjsPb3kBGnk?sub_confirmation=1 Jim Simons: https://youtu.be/6fr8XOtbPqM?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/V6dMM2-X6nk?sub_confirmation=1 Sarah Scoles: https://youtu.be/apVKobWigMw Stephen Wolfram: https://youtu.be/nSAemRxzmXM Host Brian Keating: ‍♂️ Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating Buy my book LOSING THE NOBEL PRIZE: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Subscribe for more great content https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 ✍️Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php Join my mailing list: http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.phpJoin my Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/losingthenobelprize ️Please subscribe, rate, and review the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on iTunes A production of http://imagination.ucsd.edu/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
0:07.0	You're a legend. You're an inspiration to me. You endorse my piece of writing here called
0:17.6	losing the Nobel Prize and I was super proud to have your endorsement. It means so much to me. Where are you joining us from today,
0:24.2	Jill? Oh, I'm locked down in Berkeley, right? I have been since March. Where else would we be,
0:29.7	if not locked down here in the lovely state of California.
0:33.3	So I thought today it would be wonderful to have a conversation with you
0:36.7	about your career, but also about all sorts of interesting questions
0:41.0	from our guests.
0:42.4	But the first thing I want to ask is, of course, everybody, it's burning on everybody's mind.
0:48.0	Do you believe in Santa Claus, Jill?
0:50.0	This year, Santa's got a lot to live up to, right?
0:55.0	That's right.
0:57.0	But the real question is, do you believe in that some sort of intelligence is living or might be living near the star system known as Proxima
1:06.7	Centuri B and providing us with techno signatures.
1:10.0	Ah yeah well first of all the verb believe is the wrong verb, because it doesn't matter what I believe, what you believe, it's what is, right?
1:19.0	And so this is a scientific exploration to try and find evidence of someone else's technology in my case.
1:28.3	The Proxma B story is a bit frustrating, right?
1:33.7	It never should have been made public.
1:38.6	The observations were done in a way that is problematic in the sense that they did not have a second
1:48.0	simultaneous observing capability.
1:51.4	They didn't have, it was actually somebody else's data looking at
1:55.0	something else and so the the ability to have any kind of validation confirmation just wasn't there and you know I like to say
	...

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