CSC/SETI Institute Colloquium SeriesSign up to our mailing list for regular updates by clicking here. The colloquiums are free and open to the public, and run from noon to 1 pm on Wednesdays at the SETI Institute, 515 N. Whisman Road, Mountain View, California. Archive of past lectures, videos, slides: 2009, 2008/2007 Watch past lectures video on SETI Institute Channel on Youtube
 poster
for month of November 2009
11/18/2009
The Rings of Saturn as seen by Cassini CIRS Linda Spilker, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
An extensive set of thermal measurements of Saturn’s main rings has been returned by the Cassini Composite Infrared spectrometer (CIRS) over the past five years at a variety of ring geometries that are not observable from Earth. The largest temperature changes on the lit face of the rings are driven by variations in phase angle, including an unexpected thermal surge at low phase angles. Temperatures at equinox were retrieved for the first time, as the sun traversed from the south to north side of the rings in mid-August. Thermal phase curves, our preliminary equinox results and thermal modeling will be presented.
11/25/2009 Deep Space Flight and Communications: SETI, KLT and Astronautics in a 2009 bookClaudio Maccone, Co-Vice Chair of the SETI Permanent Study Group, International Academy of Astronautics Dr. Maccone's new technical book about SETI, KLT and space missions to the Sun gravity focus will be presented in this talk. This 400-page book is entitled "Deep Space Flight and Communications", costs (unfortunately) over $100, and is divided into two parts:
(1) The first 200 pages describe the astrophysics of light-bending caused by the mass of the Sun. Since the minimal focal distance turns out to lie in between 550 and 1000 AU, any future space mission to exploit this effect must necessarily be a "deep space mission". These FOCAL space missions are studied in the book and a Phase A Proposal was submitted by Dr. Maccone to ESA back in 2000. He now argues that a similar Proposal should be submitted to NASA.
(2) The second part of the book is devoted to the KLT as optimal telecommunication tool (better than the FFT). The KLT for SETI was presented by the author in various talks, but, in this book, the reader will find the relativistic KLT also. This is useful to keep the radio link between the Earth and any deep-space spacecraft, such as the FOCAL spacecrafts to 550 AU. Dr. Maccone discovered mathematically that the relativistic KLT eigenfunctions are Bessel functions of the first kind, and that the KLT eigenvalues are the zeros of such Bessel functions. All this paves the way to "Star-Trek-like" relativistic space flights of the future.
poster
for month of December 2009
12/2/2009
Titan's Ontario Lacus: Smoothness constraints from Cassini RADARLauren Wye, Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University The Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, with frequent
flybys of the largest moon Titan. With its thick atmosphere rich in
nitrogen and hydrocarbons, it was once thought that Titan was covered in a
global ocean of methane. Cassini optical and microwave imaging instruments
have since revealed a world with a solid surface, strikingly similar in
physical appearance to Earth, complete with lakes of liquid methane/ethane
in the polar regions. Cassini RADAR altimetry data collected on the 49th
flyby of Titan (2008 December 21) over Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in
the south polar region, show signatures of a specular reflection so strong
that it saturated the radar receiver. From the specular echo strength,
which declines exponentially with increasing surface height variance, we are
able to constrain the rms surface height variation to be less than 3 mm over
the 100m-wide Fresnel zone. Lauren Wye will review her analysis of this data and the
implications for wind speeds and surface material properties.
12/9/2009
Finding Planets Around Nearby Stars: The Lick-Carnegie Extrasolar Planet Search Program
Steven S. Vogt, UCO/Lick Observatory, UC Santa Cruz
There are currently over 350 known extrasolar planets, the vast majority discovered through detection of periodic barycentric reflex motion of the planet's host star via high-precision Doppler radial velocity measurements. The Lick-Carnegie Extrasolar Planet Search Program is one such precision Doppler-based planet survey. It is currently monitoring over 1330 nearby F,G,K, and M stars for planets at 2-3 m/sec precision, and has contributed over 70% of the presently-known exoplanets. These extrasolar planetary systems display an unexpected diversity of orbital period, size, and eccentricity, and the emerging database is providing new insight into the origins and evolution of planetary systems. This talk will give a brief review of our program, reviewing details of the detection method, recent results, and future directions. The talk will also highlight the 2.4-meter Automated Planet Finder, nearing completion at Lick Observatory.
12/16/2009
Exploring Alternative SETI Search Algorithms with the ATAGerry Harp
, SETI Institute
As a novel, many-element interferometer, the ATA supports radically different observing modes than any single-dish, yet performs very well in single-dish mode using beamformers. The cutting edge technology of ATA allows simultaneous data processing in 3 different modes: spectral imaging, ultra-high resolution single-point observing, and high speed data capture. The latter mode allows the application of any algorithm you can imagine on time-series data.
In this talk Dr. Harp describe several new or "almost new" SETI algorithms that have been explored or implemented on the ATA. Recent results from prototype SETI observations are shown. These new algorithms are contrasted with standard SETI analysis and Dr. Harp will show how they may augment the search on next generation of SETI analyzers.
poster
for month of January 2010
01/06/2010 Icy Bodies of the Outer Solar System: What Does The Spectroscopy Tell Us?Dale Cruikshank, Space Science Division, NASA Ames
01/13/2010 Impact Modeling: from LCROSS to Super-EarthsErik Asphaug, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, UC Santa Cruz
01/20/2010
The EvoGrid: Building an Origin of Life Simulator & Its Implications for Life, the Universe and Everything Bruce Damer, DigitalSpace and Biota.org Bruce Damer will present the current state of the EvoGrid, a worldwide, multi-disciplinary project to simulate the chemical origin of life on Earth or as it might have occurred elsewhere in ours or other universes. When operational in 2010 the prototype EvoGrid will employ a central grid of computers to generate "digital primordial soups" and then, inspired by SETI, an even larger set of observer computers operating as @Home screen savers will be employed to look for signs of emergent complexity within the soups. While we are not expecting bona fide alien forms of digital life to emerge from the EvoGrid any time soon, the experiment will present long term profound implications for science, religion, and perceptions of our place in the universe.
01/27/2010 ESAS and the Augustine Commission: The Way Forward on US Manned SpaceflightDaniel Rasky, Director for the NASA Ames Space Portal, NASA Ames Research Center
 02/3/2010
Primordial Ice Reservoirs of the Solar SystemDavid Jewitt, Department of Earth & Space Sciences and Inst. Geophys. and Planetary Physics, UCLA We now know that ice in the solar system resides in at least three distinct reservoirs,
known as the Oort cloud, the Kuiper belt and the main-belt comets. Dr. Jewitt will discuss
the nature, distribution and significance of the ice, highlighting its connection to the
formation epoch, in a style intended to be sweeping and broadly accessible.
 02/17/2010
Asteroseismology in the era of CoRoT and Kepler space missionsConny Aerts, University of Leuven, Belgium After a general introduction into the research field of asteroseismology, we review the highlights achieved from multi-site ground-based campaigns dedicated to carefully selected targets. We show how asteroseismology has the potential to improve stellar evolution models to a level that cannot be achieved by any other method so far. Subsequently, we discuss several results from the operational French-led European space mission CoRoT (Convection, Rotation, planetary Transits) for various types of stars and illustrate the immense advantage of having long-term uninterrupted data from space with a factor 100 better precision compared to data from the ground. Finally, we will highlight the next step expected in this research, based on data assembled by the space mission Kepler (NASA) which has been designed primarily for exoplanet hunting. This mission, along with the future ESA PLATO satellite project, will allow us to do asteroseismology of numerous exoplanet host stars.
02/24/2010 Latest results from the Mars Phoenix Lander MicroscopeJohn Marshall, SETI Institute
03/17 Mongolian and other Historic Solar EclipsesLaurance Doyle
03/24 Europa Jupiter System MissionBob Pappalardo
03/31 What clays can tell us about past climate at Mawrth Vallis, MarsNancy McKeown
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