The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Hunting for Technosignatures in the Past, Present, and Future

In this lecture, Dr Sofia Sheikh (SETI Institute) will give a broad overview of the history and conceptual foundations for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), including ethical and policy issues, methodologies used in the field, and some of the cutting-edge analyses and instruments being developed by technosignature researchers today.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a sub-field of astrobiology dedicated to searching for technosignatures , signs of astronomically-observable technology in space created by extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs). In this talk, I will give a broad overview of the history and conceptual foundations for SETI, the methodologies that we use in the field, and some of the cutting-edge analyses and instruments being developed by technosignature researchers today. I will then move into a short discussion of some of the ethical and policy issues that we encounter in the technosignature field, and briefly discuss the challenges we have faced in tackling these issues.