Upcoming Event:
An Annual Holiday Event for the Whole Family

Co-sponsored by SCV-SSCS chapter

Date: Thursday, December 16, 2010

6:00pm: Networking/Light Holiday Dinner
7:00pm: Presentation
8:30pm: Adjourn

Cost: $7 for adults, free for kids and pre-college students

Location: National Semiconductor Building E Conference Center

Title

The Scientific Search for ET

Speaker

Dr. Seth Shostak, SETI Institute

Abstract

The scientific hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence is now into its fifth decade, and we still haven't uncovered a confirmed peep from any cosmic company. Could this mean that finding aliens, even if they exist, is a project for the ages - one that might take centuries or longer?

New technologies for use in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) suggest that, despite the continued dearth of signals from other societies, there is good reason to expect that success might not be far off - that we might find evidence of sophisticated civilizations within a few decades.

What would contact tell us, and what would it mean to us, and to our descendants?

Biography

Seth is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California. He has an undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University, and a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology. For much of his career, Seth conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies, and has published approximately sixty papers in professional journals.

He has written several hundred popular magazine and Web articles on various topics in astronomy, technology, film and television. He lectures on astronomy and other subjects at Stanford and other venues in the Bay Area, and for the last six years, has been a Distinquished Speaker for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is also Chair of the International Academy of Astronautics' SETI Permanent Study Group. Every week he hosts the SETI Institute's science radio show, "Are We Alone"

Seth has edited and contributed to a half dozen books. His most recent tome is Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (National Geographic).