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