Life at the SETI Institute

Emma Bakes

Dr. Emma Bakes, a SETI Institute Principal Investigator, studied the chemistry and thermodynamics of star-forming regions and the organic chemistry of Titan, Saturn's largest satellite and the early Earth. She was working on a book that explored the connection between the garments we wear and the laws of physics, entitled "Black Holes, High Heels and a Bullet Proof Vest." Dr. Bakes said she was inspired to pursue degrees in physics and astrophysics by Carl Sagan's TV series, Cosmos. Sadly, Dr. Bakes passed away February 28, 2011.

Posts by the SETI Institute on behalf of Emma Bakes
The Shore of the Cosmic Ocean: A Confluence of Humanity and Science

Janice Bishop

Dr. Janice Bishop is a chemist and planetary scientist who explores the planet Mars using spectroscopy. Her investigations of CRISM data of Mars are revealing clays and sulfates in the ancient rocks that provide information about the geochemical environment at that time. Dr. Bishop studies the spectral fingerprints of minerals and rocks in the lab in order to generate a spectral library for identification of these in the Martian data. Her research also involves collecting and studying Mars analog rocks and soils at a variety of locations including volcanic islands, cold deserts, hydrothermal regions, acidic aqueous sites, and meteorites which are the only Martian samples available on Earth to date.

Another component of Dr. Bishop’s research is collecting spectra under Mars-like conditions. Spectra of many hydrated minerals change depending on the moisture level in the air and the amount of water molecules adsorbed on the surface or bound in the mineral structure. Understanding the spectral properties of mineral mixtures in the lab is also important for identifying minerals on Mars and Dr. Bishop’s group is preparing and characterizing the spectral properties of several mixture suites.

Posts by Janice
Mars: Back through the Looking Glass
Young clays on Mars may have provided niches able to support life

Rosalba Bonaccorsi

Keen to achieve a wide picture of where life and its signatures for life are most successfully distributed, concentrated, preserved, and detected, Dr. Rosalba Bonaccorsi is an Environmental Scientist who has expanded her work to include environmental aspects of Planetary Protection. Rosalba joined the SETI Institute in 2008, and believes "where" to go on a planet to find evidence of life will determine our chances of finding it! She is currently focusing on the potential habitability aspects of surface/near-surface mineral analog environments.

As an undergraduate Rosalba held a variety of positions, including working on the ecology and ethology of marine mammals in the Mediterranean. She also worked as an elementary school teacher, a field naturalist guide providing environmental education, and a tutor for runaway teens. All of the above humbled her and gave her a perspective on life. In later years prior to graduation, she became more focused on marine geology, sedimentology and organic geochemistry as instruments to understand the changes that have occurred in old environments as recorded in sediments. As a result, she gained extensive experience (14-years+) in bulk organics analysis on literally any kind of sample.

Posts by Rosalba
Protecting and Exploring Mars from Earth

Adrian Brown

When most people look at photos of the Martian landscape, they see the kind of dry topography that, while attractive, shows only that at first glance Mars resembles many of the desert areas of Earth. By analyzing spectroscopic data gathered by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, however, SETI Institute planetary scientist Dr. Adrian Brown sees clues to where liquid water might once have puddled and pooled on the Red Planet, and possibly spawned life. Adrian is interested in finding subtle hints that large bodies of water might once have flooded the northern regions of this now-dry world, hints that the Orbiter's infrared spectrometer could provide. In addition to his search for water, Adrian hunts for clues to volcanic activity in these same northern realms, because the energy provided by such eruptions could fuel microscopic life.

Posts by Adrian
Future Direction of Martian Exploration
The Time for Mars is Now

Nathalie A. Cabrol

Dr. Nathalie A. Cabrol is a planetary scientist and explorer. She leads projects in astrobiology, extreme environments, and robotics. With the SETI Institute since 1997, her office is located at NASA Ames Research Center, CA. She is a member of the NASA Mars Exploration Rover mission science team and was the main advocate for the selection of the Gusev crater as the landing site for the Spirit rover. Nathalie explores the highest volcanic lakes on Earth at close to 20,000 ft to bring new insights into poorly known ecosystems. There, with her team, she documents life adaptation to extreme environment and the effect of rapid climate change on habitability whether here and now on Earth or in the past on early Mars. Nathalie counts over 330 professional publications and communications. She has authored three books and several chapters of books. Her research is cited in the media and has been the focus of several TV documentaries. Nathalie has given over 400 conferences since 1986, sharing her passion for exploration and discovery with the public.

Posts by Nathalie
Why Do We Explore?

Laurance Doyle

Long before the discovery of the first planet beyond our solar system, astronomer Dr. Laurance Doyle began theorizing about the habitability of planets around other stars, clarifying the conditions needed for a planet to bear life. Relying on his expertise in signal processing, he now looks for patterns in astronomical data, searching for extrasolar planets.

Recently, Laurance has begun using these same statistical tools to look for patterns in animal communication. Drawing on central concepts of information theory, he and colleagues from the University of California at Davis have precisely measured the complexity of the songs of humpback whales, comparing them with communication in other species—including humans. In the future, he plans to expand this innovative line of research, moving to the next level of understanding animal communication. Not content to understand how much an animal can communicate, he seeks to understand the meaning of the vocalizations of other species.

Posts by Laurance
First Planet Orbiting Two Stars Discovered by the NASA Kepler Spacecraft

Frank Drake

Dr. Frank Drake, who conducted the first modern SETI experiment in 1960, continues his life-long interest in the detection of extraterrestrial sentient life. He participates in an on-going search for optical signals of intelligent origin, carried out with colleagues from Lick Observatory and the University of California at Berkeley, using the 40-inch Nickel telescope at Lick.

Frank also continues to investigate radio telescope designs that optimize the chances of success for SETI (he proposed the plan used in the design of the Allen Telescope Array, based on some of his work of more than forty years ago.) He is also interested in the possibility that the very numerous red dwarf stars, stars that are much less bright than the Sun, might host habitable planets. In this regard, he has noted that the behavior of various objects in our own solar system – in particular the resonances between their rotation and orbital periods – when applied to some of the newly discovered extrasolar planets, strongly suggests that most planets orbiting red dwarfs will not keep one face towards their star, and thus are more likely to be habitable. If this is proven correct, it will increase by almost ten times the probable number of habitable planets in the Milky Way.

Posts by Frank
Frank Drake: First Contact

Paul Estrada

If planets are a dime a dozen, moons are less than a penny each. There are at least 139 moons just within our own solar system. Most of these are the property of the gas giant planets beyond Mars. More than just a nice accompaniment to planets, moons may have habitats in which liquid water could ebb and flow - and possibly be a suitable home for life. Planetary physicist Dr. Paul Estrada investigates how moons around gas giants are formed -- an important question as its answer would give us insight into the nature of moons around the myriad gas giants we know orbit other stars.

The birth of moons around gas giant planets is superficially similar to planetary formation; however, as Estrada points out, there are some very important differences. To begin with, the “environment” (pressure, density, temperature) of satellite birth is different from that of the planets. Perhaps most important, satellite systems are more compact, which means things tend to happen much faster than on the planetary scale. Consider that the giant planet Jupiter takes a dozen years to orbit the Sun, a lumbering pace compared to the days required for its moons to orbit once. As a result, once a moon forms, it has much less time to find a way to “survive.” The incentive to understand satellite formation is strong, as these small worlds might be the most plentiful locations for life in the universe.

Posts by Paul
From Dust to Planets

Lori Fenton

Planetary scientist Dr. Lori Fenton joined the SETI Institute’s Carl Sagan Center as a Principal Investigator  in 2006, and was awarded NASA’s Carl Sagan Fellowship for Early Career Researchers that same year. Lori’s primary research interests include aeolian geomorphology -- how wind shapes a planetary surface -- for both Mars and the Earth, recent and ongoing climate changes, and the mobility of wind-blown sand and dust. Her research makes use of many different types of information, including visible and thermal imagery from spacecraft and atmospheric models such as the Ames global climate model.

Lori’s recent publications describe how dunes and dune fields record climate change on Mars, the first evidence for dune migration on another planet, and how atmospheric models can be used to account for wind gustiness and its effects on sand movement.

Posts by Lori
Sand Seas of the Solar System

Friedemann Freund

Dr. Friedemann Freund doesn’t shrink from taking on the really big problems. His research has elucidated such important phenomena as the fact that rocks under stress behave like batteries that can produce currents deep within the crust of the Earth. These are not piddling electron flows, either -- the currents could be as large as millions of amperes, sufficient to be measured above ground, and perhaps even from orbit. Understanding and exploiting this phenomenon could lead to a dramatic breakthrough in earthquake forecasting.

Another one of Friedemann’s interests is the rise of oxygen in our atmosphere, which today powers all higher life, all animals - including us. The conventional wisdom is that most atmospheric oxygen is the byproduct of photosynthetic cyano-bacteria and blue-green algae, but Friedemann has presented evidence for another scenario: the global weathering or rocks releases oxygen from minerals might have begun building up the oxygen in our atmosphere since the earliest time. If this is the case, then we need to re-think experiments now being planned to search for life on distant worlds around other stars by hunting for oxygen in their atmospheres. Perhaps we’d only be finding chemistry, not biology, and more specifically, not photosynthesis as we know it from life on Earth.

Posts by Friedemann
The Future of Forecasting Earthquakes

Gerry Harp

Trained as a quantum mechanic, Dr. Gerry Harp was deeply interested in possibilities for using the multiple telescopes of the Allen Telescope Array to generate steerable  "beams" on the sky -– beams that could be far smaller than any single antenna could produce. Such beams don't emit anything, but work in reverse by capturing only energy that comes from the sky in a certain direction. Gerry joined the SETI Institute in 2000, practically at the telescope's inception and uses the telescope for SETI research.

Gerry's SETI research often focuses on using the array properties of the telescope to speed up SETI by searching large areas of the sky all at one time (imaging SETI). Gerry is also interested in extending the ways we analyze telescope data to search for signals that can contain large amounts of complex information (e.g. spread spectrum signals). Put simply, because of the long times (years) between when they send the signal and when it arrives, the aliens will help us out with some kind of error correction scheme or another. All such schemes introduce redundancy, and by designing algorithms to sense redundancy we can discover complex ET signals without knowing their content.

Posts by Gerry
DIY: Do your own SETI searches with setiQuest Data and Software
Deciphering Celestial Signals in a New Way

Gail Jacobs

Gail Jacobs works in the Institutional Advancement group of the SETI Institute. The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe. We believe we are conducting the most profound search in human history — to know our beginnings and our place among the stars.

Posts by Gail
SETI Institute: Celebrating Science

Jon Jenkins

Dr. Jon Jenkins is the Analysis Lead for NASA's Kepler Mission. He heads up a group of about two-dozen scientists and programmers who designed and built the software that is the brains behind this dramatic search for other worlds. With a photometric precision of 20 parts per million, Kepler is able to discover planets that are the same size as the rocky, inner orbs of our own solar system. By making an inventory of such worlds, Kepler will answer one of the most intriguing questions in astrobiology: are Earth-size planets abundant or rare? Jon joined the SETI Institute in 1992.

Posts by Jon
Turning Pixels into Planets

Darlene Lim

Dr. Darlene Lim is a geobiologist and limnologist whose research interests span Earth and Space Science. She conducts limnological and paleolimnological investigations of remote lakes and ponds in the Canadian High Arctic to characterize Holocene climate change. Darlene has also extrapolated her Arctic work to Mars analog paleolake reconstructions. Her research interests at Pavilion Lake include its chemical and biological limnological characterization, and the isotopic biosignatures  associated with the microbialites. She is also extremely interested in understanding the possible unique nature of Pavilion Lake through the exploration of near-by lakes and the regional geology.

Posts by Darlene
Exploring the Watery Depths of Limnology

Franck Marchis

Dr. Franck Marchis was born in France. He is currently an assistant research Astronomer at University of California at Berkeley and a Principal Investigator at SETI Institute. He received his Ph.D. in 2000 from the University of Toulouse, France in the field of planetary science.

Posts by Franck
Keck AO Observations: Multiple Asteroid Systems
Keck AO Observations: Io Volcanism - "Mornes plaines"
Kepler 10b: The First Unambiguous Rocky Exoplanet
A Landslide of Kepler Exoplanet Candidates
NASA Announced Key Pre-selected Discovery Missions
Kepler-16: Exoplanets around binary star systems DO exist

Rachel Mastrapa

Rachel Mastrapa studies the surface processes of icy Solar System bodies by interpreting their infrared spectra. The majority of her work involves performing the ground truth measurements in the laboratory including calculating the complex indices of refraction of single composition ice samples. These measurements are then used to construct model spectra to interpret the chemical composition of observed spectra. She also studies the subtle changes seen in ice mixtures that are not seen in single composition samples. She has helped measure the surface binding energy of the CH4-H2O-ice system, which can be used to measure the residence time of CH4 on H2O-ice rich surfaces. Finally, she has measured how proton irradiation can change the phase of H2O-ice from crystalline phase to amorphous phase. Rachel has collaborated with her peers to collect spectra of Europa from the Keck Observatory and interpret Cassini VIMS spectra of Enceladus.

Posts by Rachel
Paving the Way for Astronomical Discoveries

Ignacio Mosqueira

Astrophysicist Dr. Ignacio Mosqueira works with Paul Estrada to piece together the way in which giant planets - such as Jupiter and Saturn -- and their moons and rings formed. Ignacio notes that making moons is similar to forming planets. Understanding moons may have something to tell us about the possible habitats for life, since large moons could, in principle, have both the liquid water and atmosphere necessary for the kind of diverse biology we see on planet Earth. Ignacio joined the SETI Institute in 2002.

Posts by Ignacio
Worlds in the Making

Cynthia Phillips

Dr. Cynthia Phillips, an expert in processing spacecraft images of the planets, is particularly interested in the search for active geological processes on such worlds as Mars, Europa, Io, and Enceladus. Regions of current, ongoing geological activity are particularly germane from an astrobiological perspective because they could represent locations where liquid water could be present today.

Posts by Cynthia
Exploration of an Extraterrestrial Ocean
Robots vs. Humans: Should we cede solar system exploration to the robots? Do humans have a place beyond low Earth orbit?

Richard Quinn

Is the surface of Mars really sterile, or could there be still-undiscovered traces of life littering this hostile landscape? Chemist Dr. Richard Quinn joined the SETI Institute in 1993 and now focuses on understanding the reactive processes that take place on the surface of Mars and how these might give a better idea of the potential for habitable environments. As the Viking landers found three decades ago and the Phoenix mission recently confirmed, there is an abundance of complex oxidative processes occurring on Mars. These are comprised of radiation, atmosphere, dust, and soil interactions. Richard says the key to understanding Martian carbon chemistry is to unravel the dominant reaction mechanisms and kinetics of soil reactivity and organic compound decomposition.

The important point is that such chemistry may have decomposed or modified organic material that could have survived from an earlier flowering of life on Mars. Richard is heavily involved in applying his chemical research to the design of instruments and schemes for new probes that will eventually sift the Martian soil for signs of ancient inhabitants.

Posts by Richard
Mars Detective -- Investigating the Red Planet for ancient life

Mark Showalter

Dr. Mark R. Showalter, Planetary astronomer Mark Showalter is rabid about rings. While everyone knows about Saturn’s spectacular ring system, it’s often forgotten that Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune are also encircled by fainter and narrower rings. Showalter works on some of NASA’s highest-profile missions to the outer planets, including Cassini, now orbiting Saturn, and New Horizons, which recently flew past Jupiter en route to its 2015 encounter with Pluto.

Posts by Mark
From Galileo to Cassini -- 400 Years of Saturn's Rings
"Hawking Hawking"
How to Catch a Comet

Jill Tarter

Dr. Jill Tarter is Director of the SETI Institute's Center for SETI Research and also holder of the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). She is one of the few researchers to have devoted her career to hunting for signs of sentient beings elsewhere, and there are few aspects of this field that have not been affected by her work.

Being as much of an icon of SETI as Jill is, perhaps it is not surprising that the Jodie Foster character in the movie Contact" is largely inspired by this real-life researcher.

Posts by Jill
Memories of a Special Moment with Don Backer