See you in January

The Unseen Podcast is taking two weeks off for the US Holidays. The next recording session is on 8 January, so look for a new episode on our feed on 9 January. Until then, stay warm (we understand that is no problem in Australia at present) and safe, and we'll see you then.

Episode 37 - Explore Strange New Worlds

Recorded: 18 December 2015
Released: 19 December 2015
Duration: 83 minutes, 40 seconds

download the .mp3 audio file

A swath of Pluto in color

Host Paul Carr welcomes panelists Adam Smith, James Garrison and Patrick Festa to talk about some
recent advances in space science and physics, including the latest Pluto images, and the recent success by the Japan Space Agency (JAXA) in getting Akatuski into orbit around Venus on the second try. Plus, a brief, informal tutorial on how rockets work and our recommendations for this episode.

We apologize for the brief audio glitch at 11:57. It hasn't happened before and hopefully will not happen again.

Erratum: ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) was launched in 1997.

Links

Pluto Images
Akatsuki Mission to Venus
Hyabusa 2
LISA Pathfinder
LIGO
ACE Mission
Terra Mission
Gravitationally Lensed Supernova
Stellerator

Recommendations:

Adam: Cassini Enceladus Images
James: Cowboy Bebop
Patrick: Saying, "Oh, I was Wrong"
Paul: spaceweather.com

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Panelists: Adam Smith, James Garrison, Patrick Festa
Music: DJ Spooky

Unseen Podcast Episode 37 by Paul Carr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://traffic.libsyn.com/unseenpodcast/Unseen_37_Strange_New_Worlds.mp3.

Episode 36 - Exoplanets and the Drake Equation

Recorded: 11 December 2015
Released: 12 December 2015
Duration: 81 minutes

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Host Paul Carr and panelists Marsha Barnhart, Adam Smith, Nick Nielsen and James Garrison talk

The Kepler Space Telescope

about exoplanet discoveries and what all the exoplanets might mean for understanding the likelihood of us finding other technological civilizations. We talk about Kepler, and the upcoming TESS and PLATO missions, as well as the cancelled Terrestrial Planet Finder.

Links

The Wow! Signal: The Golden Age of Exoplanets
Kepler Space Telescope: Exoplanet Hunter
NASA TESS Mission
ESA's PLATO Mission
Moon Microbe Mystery Finally Solved
The Drake Equation
Fossil Microbes on Mars?

ESA's PLATO Concept

Dynamical Considerations for Life In Multihabitable Planetary Systems
Any Sufficiently Advanced Civilization is Indistinguishable from Nature
Episode 24 - Define Panspermia
Jerry Coyne: Why Evolution is True

Recommendations

James Garrison: Gaelic Storm
Paul Carr: What If? by Randall Munro
Adam Synergy:

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Panelists: Marsha Barnhart, James Garrison, Nick Nielsen, and Adam Smith
Music: Dj Spooky

Episode 35 - Smarter than We Are

Recorded: 6 December 2015
Released:6 December 2015
Duration:82 minutes, 36 seconds

Nick Bostrom

download the .mp3 audio file

Host Paul Carr welcomes new panelist Jeff Boerst, as well as Adam Smith, Buck Field, and Patrick Festa. They talk about the future prospect of super intelligence. Is super intelligence even possible? Will robots tolerate us after we are no longer of use to them? Can people opt out of the robot society?

Links

Nick Nielsen on the Halos of Vanished Civilizations and The Wilderness Hypothesis
Help The SETI Institute
How Long to Continue?

Nick Bostrom: Superintelligence
Nick Bostrom: What Happens when our Computers are Smarter Than Us? (video)
Robin Hanson on Human Emulations (Ems)
Robin Hanson's TED Talk on Ems
Episode 3 on Asimov's 3 Laws.

Recommendations

Adam Smith: Brain Pickings
Buck Field: Ghost In the Shell Standalone Complex
Patrick Festa: The Kraken Project by Douglas Preston
Jeff Boerst: Bone Tomahawk
Paul Carr: The Frood by Jem Roberts

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Panelists: Adam Smith, Buck Field, Jeff Boerst, and Patrick Festa
Music: DJ Spooky
Post Production: Auphonic.com
Hosting: Libsyn.com