SETI's Jill Tarter. Credit: SETI
After nearly four decades of of listening for for signs of life in the cosmos, astronomer Jill Tarter is one of a handful of true experts on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). And since 1995 we’ve known for certain there are other planets out there; the goal now is to find one that’s habitable.
“Exoplanets are real,” Tarter said recently, talking about how the Kepler planet-hunting mission has changed the concept of SETI. “We are now observing stars where we KNOW there are planets. We’ve gone from having 20-30 potential targets to having thousands of targets. Kepler is telling us WHERE to look, and we are focusing there.”
But so far the search has come up empty. After so long with no luck, why continue? Tarter recently appeared on PBS’s “Secret Lives of Scientists”
and she gave them an answer in less than 30 seconds.
Using data from Hubble and other observatories, a team of scientists have determine the cause…
Observations from the Gaia spacecraft gives us a detailed picture of how the Sun will…
The new generation of Starlink satellites remain above the accepted brightness threshold.
In a recent study submitted to Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, a team of researchers from…
When big spiral galaxies collide, they don't end up as one really big spiral. Instead,…
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have observed what could be the youngest exoplanet…