SETI Institute

• Co-founder of communications chip company, Qualcomm, Antonio passed away on May 13, 2022, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy to enable breakthrough science in the search for intelligent life beyond our world.
• With more than 100 scientists actively conducting research across 173 separate programs, the SETI Institute explores six key science disciplines: Astronomy and Astrophysics; Exoplanets; Planetary Exploration; Astrobiology; Climate and Bio-geoscience; and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
• As such, Antonio’s gift will also serve to permanently endow core SETI programs and foster new global partnerships.
• “This gift will impact all research domains of the SETI Institute,” said Dr. Nathalie Cabrol, Director of the Carl Sagan Center for Research.

• We’re only halfway through 2023, and it feels already like the year of alien contact.
• In February, President Joe Biden gave orders to shoot down three unidentified aerial phenomena – NASA’s title for UFOs.
• Most recently, an independent analysis published in June suggests that UFOs might have been collected by a clandestine agency of the U.S. government.
• Our collaborative preparations for the workshop drew from transdisciplinary research in Australia, New Zealand, Africa and across the Americas.

Who’s in charge of first contact

• The question of who is “in charge” of preparing for contact with alien life immediately comes to mind.
• The communities – and their interpretive lenses – most likely to engage in any contact scenario would be military, corporate and scientific.
• Few in the social science and humanities fields have been afforded opportunities to contribute to concepts of and preparations for contact.

Ethics of listening

• Neither Breakthough Listen nor SETI’s site features a current statement of ethics beyond a commitment to transparency.
• SETI-affiliated scholars tend to reassure critics that the intentions of those listening for technosignatures are benevolent, since “what harm could come from simply listening?” The chair emeritus of SETI Research, Jill Tarter, defended listening because any ET civilization would perceive our listening techniques as immature or elementary.
• Seen this way, isn’t listening potentially without permission just another form of surveillance?
• It seems contradictory that we begin our relations with aliens by listening in without their permission while actively working to stop other countries from listening to certain U.S. communications.

Histories of contact

• Throughout histories of Western colonization, even in those few cases when contactees were intended to be protected, contact has led to brutal violence, pandemics, enslavement and genocide.
• Cook’s actions put into motion wide-scale colonization and Indigenous dispossession across Oceania, including the violent conquests of Australia and New Zealand.
• As scholars attuned to both research ethics and histories of colonialism, we wrote about Cook in our working group statement to showcase why SETI might want to explicitly disentangle their intentions from those of corporations, the military and the government.
• David Delgado Shorter has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the University of California, and the California Community Foundation.

• PORTO, Portugal, April 27, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Explorers Club announced the first 15 explorers of this year's lineup for the Global Exploration Summit (GLEX Summit) that will take place on Terceira Island (Azores, Portugal), from June 14-16.
• More than 40 panels will showcase the missions and scientific research that they are conducting as they explore land, oceans and space.
• In the spotlight will be the Artemis Mission, the James Webb Space Telescope, ocean conservation, as well as polar exploration, biology, planetary sciences and archeology.
• University students, researchers and professors have a 50% discount, applied on the GLEX Academic pass.

• LAS VEGAS, January 4, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Unistellar, the creator of the world's most powerful and easy-to-operate smart telescopes, introduced the all-new eQuinox 2 at CES today.
• With the eQuinox 2, even telescope novices can find themselves observing astronomical phenomena in minutes thanks to a smart telescope 100 percent controlled by a mobile or tablet application.
• The eQuinox 2 smart telescope will retail for $2,499, with pre-sales starting January 3 and global availability early 2023.
• Unistellar is the creator of the world's most powerful and easy-to-operate smart telescopes, the eVscope 2 and the eQuinox 2.