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.

Arecibo Wow! I: An Astrophysical Explanation for the Wow! Signal

Our episode (#19) with Big Ear scientist Bob Dixon

A previous appearance by Abel Mendez on this podcast.

Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico

The Arecibo Radio Telescope Collapse

The FAST Radio Telescope

Astrophysical MASERs (microwave lasers)

Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: Masers

Population Inversion (Wikipedia)

The Hydrogen 21 cm line

MASERs, Interstellar and Circumstellar, Theory.

Host, editor, producer: Paul Carr

Music: Quincas Moreira (Black Swan), George Hrab (Far), Jason Robinson

Episode 50 of the Wow! Signal Podcast by Paul Carr is licensed under CC BY 4.0

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."

Villarroel+ , Exploring Nine simultaneously occurring transients on April 12th 1950.

Burst 19: Our Sky Now and Then (August 2016)

Episode 41: The Vanishing Sources with Beatriz Villarroel (November 2019)

The Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations project: I. USNO objects missing in modern sky surveys and follow-up observations of a "missing star

The Palomar Digital Sky Survey

Gran Telescopio Canarias

The United States Nuclear Testing Program

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Ahleuchatistas and Erika Lloyd

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.

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 am a visiting Research Associate in History at St Benet's College, Oxford University, and I am working for Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute with a grant from the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative. 
 
I am interested in the history of existential risk and of existential hope: that is, how people first came to understand the perils and promises that face us as a species. I see this as the central philosophical drama of the modern world: how we came to appreciate our position—and precarity—as intelligent beings within an otherwise seemingly silent and sterile universe. 
 
My goal is to reveal how contemporary research into global risks can be seen as part of the wider story of our ‘coming of age’ as a civilisation and a species.

Thomas Moynihan - https://thomasmoynihan.xyz

X-Risk at MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/x-risk

Mary Shelley - The Last Man

Churchill - Shall We All Commit Suicide?

The Order of the Dolphin

Frank Drakę: A Speculation on the Influence of Biological Immortality on SETI

Natural Selection of Stellar Civilizations by the Limits of Growth

The Jaws of Darkness

The Ethics of METI

Co-hosts: Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis

Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Solar Arkestra, DJ Spooky