Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: The Quest to Find Ourselves Among the Stars

For millennia, humans have pondered their place in the cosmos and asked the question "Are we alone?". Now, for the first time in our history, the answer may be within our grasp. In the last several decades, astronomers have determined that the key environmental factors that gave rise to life on Earth are present in abundance throughout the Milky Way galaxy. Long lived stars, planets, water and complex organic molecules are known to be ubiquitous. Armed with the certainty that life could have developed elsewhere, scientists everywhere are racing to determine if indeed it did, and if so, whether some of that life went on to develop a technological capability similar to our own.

In this public lecture, Dr. Andrew Siemion will discuss the history of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), the latest developments in the science of astrobiology that are informing modern SETI and the prospects for dramatic advances in the field using the latest generation of world-class telescopes, including the Square Kilometer Array.