The Wow! Signal Podcast

We welcome back Professor Abel Mendez from the University of Puerto Rico to tell us about recent research into data from the Arecibo radio telescope focused on cold hydrogen clouds and a proposed natural explanation for the Big Ear Wow! Signal that we covered in depth in Episode 19 . We recommend you download the draft paper so you can follow along. Links: Arecibo Wow! I: An Astrophysical Explanat...

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 Va...

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 a...

Released: 28 November 2020 Duration: 70 minutes, 39 seconds Co-hosts Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis engage philosopher Chelsea Haramia on the ethics of sending signals into space that might be received by intelligent beings in the cosmos. For more information about this episode, include a rich set of links, please see the blog entry for Episode 48 at: https://wowsignalpodcast.com Guest Bio Chelse...

Released: 7 November 2020 Duration: 57 minutes, 36 seconds   Co hosts Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis welcome space historian David Skogerboe to talk about the pro-space activism of Arthur C. Clarke. Guest Bio: David Skogerboe is a space historian and science communicator. He recently earned his MSc in the  History and Philosophy of Science from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, where he focu...

Released: 6 April 2020 Duration: 53 minutes, 55 seconds   Author and podcaster Wade Roush talks about his forthcoming book from MIT Press, Extraterrestrials . The book covers astrobiology, SETI, the Fermi paradox and more for a literate but non-specialist audience. WADE ROUSH, a Boston-based science and technology journalist, is a columnist at Scientific American and the producer and host of Sooni...

Released: 31 March 2020 Duration: 54 minutes, 8 seconds   Co-hosts Paul Carr and Daniela DePaulis welcome Dr. Paola Castaño to talk about her research among the science teams working on the International Space Station . For more information, please visit our blog at https://wowsignalpodcast.com Guest Bio Paola Castaño is a sociologist of science. She recently completed a Newton International Fello...

Released: 20 March 2020 Duration: 31 minutes, 42 seconds   Astronomer David Blank responded to our invitation to comment on the Villarroel+ paper we covered in Episode 41 , which he describes as "very fascinating."   Links The VASCO project: I. USNO objects missing in modern sky surveys and follow-up observations of a "missing star" Dorrit Hoffleit   and her autobiography: Misfortunes as Blessings...

Released: 22 January 2020 Live recording: 20 January 2020 Duration:  66 minutes 45 seconds Thread: Astronomy and Astrophysics   Host Paul Carr along with Daniela De Paulis and Ciro Villa welcome astronomer Stella Kafka , director of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). We talk about the recent and possibly unprecedented dimming of Betelgeuse, among many other astronomy topi...

Released:  Duration: 55 minutes, 36 seconds   Adam Dipert is a veteran circus performer and dancer who recently received his PhD in physics from Arizona State University.  Her has brought his various interests together by researching human movement in microgravity. We are going to let him tell you all about that. Adam will be presenting about this work at the Conference for Research on Choreograph...

Released: 11 December 2019 Duration: 48 minutes, 30 seconds   Co-hosts Daniela DePaulis and Paul Carr welcome Julia DeMarines (@LifeNSpace) to talk about bouncing radio signals off the moon. Julia is involved in a moon bounce research project for Berkeley SETI , and Daniela has used moonbounce in her art projects, including Cogito. We also get into a discussion of METI, and the importance of messa...

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 Sk...

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 ener...

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 Universi...

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 Make...

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 bee...

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 Monte...

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 K...

Released: 6 February 2018 Duration: 24 minutes, 48 seconds   A hundred years ago cosmologists were struggling to understand the nature and structure of the universe, and at the heart of this struggle was the island universe hypothesis. Today we find ourselves confronted with a similar question posed at a far greater scale. In order to resolve our cosmic archipelago problem we will have to attempt...

Released: 25 January 2018 Duration: 21 minutes, 51 seconds   A hundred years ago cosmologists were struggling to understand the nature and structure of the universe, and at the heart of this struggle was the island universe hypothesis. Today we find ourselves confronted with a similar question posed at a far greater scale. As we confront these great questions of cosmology, whether a hundred years...

Released: 21 January 2018 Duration: 19 minutes   A hundred years ago cosmologists were struggling to understand the nature and structure of the universe, and at the heart of this struggle was the island universe hypothesis. Today we find ourselves confronted with a similar question posed at a far greater scale. As we confront these great questions of cosmology, whether a hundred years ago or today...

Released: 3 January 2018 Duration: 15 minutes, 37 seconds   Host Paul Carr goes over the new paper by Tabetha Boyajian and 206 coauthors:  The First Post-Kepler Brightness Dips of KIC 8462852 .    Links: Burst 13 - Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, part 1 Burst 23 - Tabby Boyajian's on Elsie Burst 24 - The Summer of Tabby's Star Where's The Flux The KIC 8462852 subreddit The KIC 8462852 subreddit wi...

Released: 31 December 2017 Duration: 65 minutes, 20 seconds Daniela DePaulis and Nick Nielsen in conversation with Frank White on the Overview Effect.   Detailed show notes To Be Supplied. Please see wowsignalpodcast.com for more information.    

Released: 3 December 2017 Duration: 11 minutes 43 seconds   Host Paul Carr covers some recent developments with respect to Boyajian's Star, especially the 4 dips of the Summer of 2017.   Links: wherestheflux.com Burst 23 - Tabby Boyajian discusses Elsie Where Is the Flux Going? The Long-Term Photometric Variability of Boyajian's Star Extinction and the Dimming of KIC 8462852 Optical Polarimetry of...