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

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

Chelsea Haramia received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she specialized in ethics. She is now an assistant professor in the philosophy department at Spring Hill College. She is also co-editor of the online journal 1000-Word Philosophy, which houses a growing set of original 1000-word essays on philosophical questions, figures, and arguments aimed at an audience of philosophers and non-philosophers alike. She has published in the areas of normative ethics, bioethics, animal ethics, aesthetics, feminist philosophy, and astrobiology ethics. Her current work involves ethical and metaethical analyses of space exploration and of the search for intelligent life in particular.  

Co-hosts: Paul Carr and Daniel De Paulis

Producer: Paul Carr

Music: DJ Spooky, Nest, Erika Lloyd.

The Wow! Signal is published under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license.

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.

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 focused his research on the intersection of space science, science fiction, and science communication. During his masters, he interned at the NASA History Division in Washington DC, where he spent countless hours perusing the most interesting historical reference collections on the planet. He is presently a freelance writer and editor while he awaits the emergence of his first child, and he hopes to soon begin a PhD and a fruitful career as a professional nerd.

The Godfather of Satellites: Arthur C. Clarke and the Battle for Narrative Space in the Popular Culture of Spaceflight, 1945-1995, David Skogerboe, full master's thesis

Apollo 12: Why Don't You Know Me? You Should., David Skogerboe, NASA News & Notes

Wireless World Feb. & Oct. 1945, Scans of Clarke's articles proposing the geostationary satellite

How the World Was One: Beyond the Global Village, Arthur C. Clarke (1992), Clarke's overview of the impact of communication technology on society

The Making of a Moon: The Story of the Earth Satellite Program, Arthur C. Clarke (1957), Clarke's pre-history of satellite technology, first published before Sputnik

The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke (1979), Clarke's sci-fi that features the space elevator and "project clean-up"

Arthur C. Clarke's official website

An expansive bibliography of Clarke's work. An impressive reminder of just how hard he pushed to propel humans into space, and keep them there.

Co-hosts: Paul Carr and Daniela De Paulis

Music: DJ Spooky and Lloyd Rogers

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 Soonish, an independent podcast about the future. He has served as Boston bureau reporter for Science, senior editor and San Francisco bureau chief at MIT Technology Review, chief correspondent and San Francisco editor for Xconomy, and acting director of MIT’s Knight Science Journalism program. He holds a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT.

For more information, please visit us at https://wowsignalpodcast.com

The Extraterrestrial page at MIT Press

Six Strange Facts about Oumuamua

Sofia Sheikh and the Nine Axes

The Vanishing Sources

Where is Everybody?

Stephen Webb's Book on the Fermi Paradox

Natalie Cabrol

Seth Shostak on the Zoo Hypothesis

The MIT Technology Review

The Hub and Spoke Podcast Network

The Soonish podcast

The podcast contact page

Wow! Signal Live

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Lloyd Rogers and Jason Robinson

The Wow! Signal is released under the Creative Commons Attribution License

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."

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 in Disguise

Bradley Schaefer and the Harvard Plates

Josh Grindlay, PI of DASCH

The Very Large Array Sky Survey

The VASCO Citizen Science Project

Host and Producer: Paul Carr

Music: Lloyd Rogers