A screening of the film Contact and talk with Dr. Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute
Join astronomer Jill Tarter, whose work and life was a key model for the character Jodie Foster plays in the film Contact, for a very special evening of science fiction and cutting-edge science. We will screen the full-length film about the discovery of intelligent life among the stars, and then hear Dr. Tarter discuss her ongoing work at the SETI Institute to find radio signals from alien civilizations. After her film and the talk, there will be time for questions from the audience.
Here is what Dr. Tarter has to say about the evening:
“Contact is a wonderful film that tries to depict the scientific project we call SETI (the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence), and does so with enthusiasm and dramatic flair. Since it’s based on a novel by astronomer Carl Sagan, that should come as no surprise. Nobody has yet had the experience of detecting a radio signal with a message from a civilization around a distant star, so what happens in the film and book after that moment are pure fiction – maybe Carl guessed right, maybe he didn’t. But my colleagues and I at the SETI Institute hope to find out one day just how close he got.
After we see the film together, we’ll talk a bit about what the film got right and where it made some blunders with the facts. I’ll share with you some things you may not know about the making of the film. But then we’ll change our focus to the real quest to find our counterparts among the stars.
In 1968, Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders’ photo of ‘Earthrise’ changed our collective point of view — for the first time we saw our planet as a single entity surrounded by the darkness of space. Scientists are about to change our collective perspective again — imagine what will happen when we know that there are in fact *two* such Earth-like planets hanging in the blackness of space…, or three, or a multitude! With the Kepler spacecraft, and its successors, you will not have to wait long before that is our new reality. We will soon know ourselves to be one, among many, Earth-like planets in this region of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Once other Earths are known to exists, I suspect that there will be a growing curiosity about whether life, even intelligent life, might exist on those worlds and SETI will be poised to try to answer that question. Indeed we are already doing so, as we point the Allen Telescope Array and other telescopes to those candidate worlds that we think are closest to being Earth-analogs. We are experimenting with new ways to conduct our searches, ways that actively involve people all across this planet, and in so doing we hope to trivialize the differences among humans and help us all to internalize our true identity as Earthlings.”
Logistical Notes:
- After 5 pm, all lots at San Francisco State are open to the public, but you must buy a parking permit for the day. See: http://www.sfsu.edu/~parking/text/parking.html Street parking is very difficult around the university’s perimeter.
- It will be a full evening, so you may want to bring a box dinner with you if you don’t get a chance to eat before you arrive.
For more information about the SETI program, see: www.seti.org
When: Wednesday, November 2nd, 6-9 PM
Where: McKenna Theater, San Francisco State University, Creative Arts Building, Room 103, McKenna Theater, 1600 Holloway Avenue San Francisco, CA 94132
Speakers:
‘Are we alone?’ Humans have been asking [this question] forever. The probability of success is difficult to estimate but if we never search the chance of success is zero.”
Astronomer Jill Tarter is Director of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute’s Center for SETI Research, and also holder of the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI. She has devoted her career to hunting for signs of sentient beings elsewhere, and almost all aspects of this field have been affected by her work.
Jill led for Project Phoenix, a decade-long SETI scrutiny of about 750 nearby star systems, using telescopes in Australia, West Virginia and Puerto Rico. While no clearly extraterrestrial signal was found, this project was the most comprehensive targeted search for artificially generated cosmic signals ever undertaken. Jill currently serves on the management board for the Allen Telescope Array, a massive new instrument that will eventually comprise 350 antennas, each 6 meters in diameter. This telescope will be able to enormously increase the speed, and the spectral range, of the hunt for signals from other distant technologies by orders of magnitude.
Jill is committed to the education of future citizens and scientists. Beyond her scientific leadership at NASA and the SETI Institute, Jill has been actively involved in developing curriculum for children. She was Principal Investigator for two curriculum development projects funded by NSF, NASA, and others. One project, the Life in the Universe series, created 6 science teaching guides for grades 3-9. The other project, Voyages Through Time, is an integrated high school science curriculum on the fundamental theme of evolution in six modules: Cosmic Evolution, Planetary Evolution, Origin of Life, Evolution of Life, Hominid Evolution and Evolution of Technology.
Cost: FREE
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