This past weekend, August 13–15, debuted the first SETIcon, which gathered more than a thousand participants in Santa Clara, California. The event — “the first-ever public convention focused on the search for life in the universe in science fact and science fiction” hosted by the SETI Institute (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) — helped celebrate the 50th anniversary of SETI research, the 80th birthday of SETI champion Frank Drake, and the 25th anniversary of the institute itself. Melita Thorpe, owner of travel firm MWT Associates, which runs Astronomy’s trips and tours, attended SETIcon and sent us a nice recap of the event:
One word would describe this past weekend: brilliant. The intellectual level at SETIcon was somewhere just shy of Stephen Hawking. It also sparkled with stars, including Tim Russ, who played Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager; Andre Bormais, writer and TV producer of, among other things, Star Trek: Enterprise; and Kevin Grazier, science advisor for Battlestar Galactica. The biggest stars, though, were the bright scientists, teachers, and students from across the United States who came together to ask “when,” “how,” and “if” contact will happen.
Friday night’s opener was a mesmerizing visual by former Grateful Dead drummer and composer Mickey Hart. His “Rhythms of the Universe” floated over the audience as he re-created the heartbeats of the galaxy. Later, opening night closed with a Rock Band party featuring Phil Plait, Discover magazine’s “Bad Astronomer.”
Without any lunch breaks built into the weekend, participants ate in their seats on Saturday and Sunday, not wanting to miss any of the many choices of panel discussions. Given the topics, each presentation was filled with highly animated conversation and debate.
On Saturday, David Morrison, NASA scientist and director of the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe; Rusty Schweickart, Apollo astronaut; and Plait posed the question of “robot vs. man” for space exploration. Then, Debra Fischer, the first woman to discover a planet, and Gibor Basri, co-investigator for NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting mission, shared their interest in discovering Earth-sized planets and explained what Kepler is doing to help achieve that goal. The Kepler team announced in June that ground-based telescopes and the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes are performing follow-up observations on a specific set of 400 objects of interest.
Saturday night’s piece de resistance was the celebration for Frank Drake, the founder and father of the search. The gala featured speeches from Drake’s colleagues Seth Shostak, SETI senior astronomer; Jill Tarter, award-winning astronomer of the SETI Institute; Andy Franknoi, astronomer and winner of California Professor of the Year; and Tom Pierson, SETI Institute CEO.
Sunday’s highlight was definitely a panel discussion titled, “Was Stephen Hawking Right: Should We Not Broadcast to Extraterrestrial Civilizations?” The banter between Shostak and science-fiction writer Robert Sawyer kept everyone on the edge of their seats.
My visit concluded with a talk by Peter Jenniskens, meteorite expert. In the presentation, he showed a visual of an oncoming meteorite that landed in the northern Sudan Desert and provided shots of the group of students stretched for miles in search of the shattered rock. To top it off, Jenniskens had a piece of the Sudanese find with him.
Overall, SETIcon treated its participants to creativity from the finest astronomical minds in the world. I hope to see you there next year.
Thanks, Melita!