The Search for Space Aliens

The Supermassive Podcast

Izzie Clarke

Astronomy, History, Science, Physics

4.6 • 556 Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hosts Izzie Clarke and Dr Becky Smethurst are starting 2025 with a biggie. The scientific search for extraterrestrial life:

Where are scientists looking? How do they search for potential signals? And what the heck is the plan if they find one?! The Supermassive team hears from Seth Shostak from the SETI Institute about the search for life beyond Earth, and Dr John Elliot from the University of St Andrews explains what would happen if we were to detect them.

Thanks for all of your brilliant questions - keep them coming! You can email podcast@ras.ac.uk or find us on instagram, @SupermassivePod.

And, as promised, here's more information on National Astronomy Week 2025, running from 1st-9th February: https://astronomyweek.org.uk

The Supermassive Podcast is a Boffin Media production. The producers are Izzie Clarke and Richard Hollingham.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're looking for that techno signature.
0:04.0	What's happened on planet Earth probably isn't a miracle.
0:07.1	There are lots of planets out there.
0:08.7	That's the fundamental problem.
0:10.1	We just don't have the data.
0:11.4	Do you think intelligent space aliens exist?
0:18.5	Hello and welcome to the fifth anniversary edition of the supermassive Podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with the science journalist Izzy Clark and astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smethurst.
0:30.2	I think it's too late in January to say happy new year now. But anyway, bring on a supermass massive 2025, I guess is what I will say.
0:38.3	Yeah, I can't believe we've been doing this for five years. That has flown by.
0:42.6	Where did the time go? And also, how are we only getting to the topic of extraterrestrial life right now?
0:50.6	Yeah. I honestly can't believe we haven't done this episode sooner now. So this episode is all about the search, the
0:57.6	scientific search actually, for extraterrestrial life. Yeah, where are astrophysicists looking? How do they
1:04.1	search for signals? And what the heck is the plan if we find extraterrestrial life? I'm sure people
1:10.2	would like to know.
1:11.7	All of that is coming up in the show.
1:13.2	But before I get into it, I need to do a little bit of admin.
1:17.4	Okay.
1:18.0	Fun.
1:18.9	So all of us here in the Supermassive team wanted to let you know that from next month,
1:23.5	we are going to start having adverts on the podcast.
1:26.4	We want to keep this podcast free for everyone,
1:29.2	and this is just simply to help keep the show running. However, if you really don't want to hear
	...

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