SETI talk at T2F on Friday evening

By Salman Hameed

T2F is one of my favorite locations to give public talks. I love the atmosphere and the audience interaction is always exciting (see my 2009 post on it here). I will be there to give a talk on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) tomorrow (Friday, March 18th) at 7pm. You can find more details here. This will be my third Science ka Adda (Cafe Scientifique) talk at T2F - and I'm looking forward to it.

My talk will focus on the implications of the detection of an ET signal. This was also a topic recently discussed at the AAAS meeting (I still owe a post on that), and something that I find fascinating to think about (and have strong opinions about it :)). Plus, I'm teaching Aliens - Close Encounters of a Multi-Disciplinary Kind this semester (pdf syllabus here) - and so this talk is a good prep for me!

Here is the abstract of the talk:

What will be the impact on society if we detect a clear signal from an ET civilization?

Planets, planets everywhere … Just fifteen years ago, humans had confirmed detections of planets only in our solar system. Today, the number of candidate planets is pushing over fifteen hundred – with some located in the ‘habitable zone’. However, so far, there has been no confirmed detection of a signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence. What if we detect an unambiguous signal from an alien intelligence? What will be its impact on society, culture, and religion? While we may not be able to say much about alien sociology, we can certainly take a stab at guessing the reaction of our fellow human beings.