Jason Wright
February 10, 2022
Zoom recording
Abstract:
I’ll give an informal overview of a recent paper nearly accepted for publication written with the CATS (Characterizing Atmospheric TechnoSignatures) group, in which we compile and update arguments about the abundance of technological vs. non-technological life in the Galaxy. Despite the intuition propagated by the Drake Equation, there are many plausible reasons that technological life could be more abundant, more detectable, longer lived, and unambiguous than biological life. The implication is that SETI should sit alongside searches for biosignatures as part of an optimum mixed strategy for the detection of life. I’ll also note how both endeavors have explored avenues of the problem the other can benefit from.