SETI Live

In this SETI Live episode, host Simon Steel (Deputy Director of the Carl Sagan Center) chats with evolutionary biologist Philipp Schiffer (Worm Lab) about one of the most astonishing discoveries in modern biology: scientists have revived a microscopic worm that had been frozen in Siberian permafrost for roughly 46,000 years. These nematodes entered a state of cryptobiosis — a kind of biological "pause" — and came back to life when gently thawed in the lab. They didn't just wiggle; they fed, reproduced, and gave us a window into life's extreme resilience. Simon and Philipp dive into the role of cryptobiosis, how radiocarbon dating places these organisms back in the late Pleistocene when woolly mammoths roamed, and what it means for the limits of suspended animation. This is biology meeting deep time — and you're invited to stretch your imagination along with the science. (Recorded live 29 January 2026.)

For more than two decades, millions of volunteers turned their home computers into a planet-scale telescope, donating idle processing power to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence through SETI@home. That effort ended in 2020—but the data never stopped speaking. Now, UC Berkeley scientists have taken a fresh, rigorous look at the vast SETI@home archive and identified around 100 intriguing signals that warrant closer scrutiny. In this SETI Live, host Beth Johnson is joined by Eric Korpela (UC Berkeley), one of the scientists behind the original SETI@home project and the new analyses. Together, they'll unpack how citizen science made this work possible, what these signals actually are (and are not), how researchers sort cosmic noise from something genuinely interesting, and what this next phase of investigation means for the future of SETI. Are any of these signals evidence of technology beyond Earth? Probably not—but "probably" is exactly where the science gets interesting. Join us for a deep dive into distributed computing, signal vetting, and what happens after the screensavers stop. (Recorded live 22 January 2026.)

Using early data from the European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope, astronomers have analyzed over one million galaxies to test a long-standing idea in astrophysics: that galaxy mergers help trigger the growth of supermassive black holes. In this SETI Live, host Dr. Moiya McTier will explore two new Euclid studies that combine vast sky surveys, machine learning, and multi-wavelength observations to uncover when and why active galactic nuclei (AGN) ignite. The results show that galaxies in the midst of mergers are far more likely to host actively feeding black holes — and that the brightest AGN are almost always found in cosmic collisions. Dr. McTier will be joined by lead authors Dr. Berta Margalef-Bentabol, Dr. Lingyu Wang, and Dr. Antonio la Marca from the Space Research Organisation Netherlands (SRON). They will discuss how Euclid identifies merging galaxies at scale, how researchers measure the black hole's contribution to a galaxy's light, and what this tells us about the coevolution of galaxies and their central black holes. We'll also look ahead to what future Euclid data could reveal as the survey expands to billions of galaxies. (Recorded live 15 January 2026.)

2026 is a pivotal year for space science. From humans returning to the Moon to new telescopes opening more expansive windows on the universe, this year marks a turning point in how we explore space—and why it matters. SETI Institute communications specialist Beth Johnson and Senior Planetary Astronomer Franck Marchis will tour the biggest missions, milestones, and moments shaping space science in 2026. We'll look at crewed lunar exploration, robotic missions to asteroids and planets, next-generation observatories, and the celestial events unfolding above our own skies. Along the way, we'll talk about what these missions are designed to discover, the questions they're trying to answer, and how they fit into the bigger story of humanity's search to understand our place in the cosmos. Whether you follow every launch or love looking up at the night sky, this episode will connect the dots between ambitious engineering, fundamental science, and the sense of wonder that keeps us exploring. (Recorded live 8 January 2026.)

We're going live with Dr. Cynthia Phillips, Europa Clipper Project Staff Scientist and Science Communications Lead, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to explore a surprising and exciting new chapter in comet science. Recently, the Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) aboard NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft made unique observations of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS at a time when Earth- and Mars-based telescopes couldn't see it. In this livestream, communications specialist Beth Johnson and Dr. Phillips will unpack what these observations mean for our understanding of interstellar visitors and how instruments designed for one mission can yield discoveries well beyond their original goals. We'll lay out: • How Europa-UVS captured data on 3I/ATLAS's tails and coma while other assets were blocked by the Sun, bridging a critical observational gap. • What signatures of oxygen, hydrogen, and dust the instrument detected, and why that matters. • Why observations from unexpected vantage points — like those aboard Europa Clipper — can deepen our picture of interstellar objects. • What this tells us about the composition, activity, and evolution of a comet that formed around another star. Interstellar comets like 3I/ATLAS are cosmic time capsules from beyond our solar system, carrying clues about alien planetary systems. Capturing data from a spacecraft not originally tasked with comet science is a testament to scientific adaptability and ingenuity — and it gives researchers a rare look inside the workings of an object that has journeyed across the galaxy to visit us. Press release: https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/europa-clipper/2025/12/18/nasas-europa-clipper-observes-comet-3i-atlas/ (Recorded live 19 December 2025.)