 I'm here with Dr. Jim Davenport and we are about to talk about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence or SETI. I think this is one of the first times on Strange New Worlds that we've actually discussed this topic as our main topic for the episodes. I'm really excited to be speaking to you about this. I find that shocking because it seems like the topical overlap between SETI and Star Trek would be so ripe. I'm excited to be the inaugural voyage of this topic. Astrobiology is this still very fledgling fields but it's you know face the issues of the origin of life and the habitability for extremophile organisms these microscopic bacteria and archaea that live in hot springs and so forth and that is considered serious science and the detection of biosignatures of these more simple life forms on other worlds is also considered serious science but all of a sudden once you ask the question is there intelligent life on another world there's this laugh factor associated with it. Do you think science fiction actually plays a role in generating this laugh factor that within the scientific community not taking the search for extraterrestrial intelligence seriously? Yeah and I think that's why this is a really interesting venue to talk about this. Two real scientists, we'll characterize ourselves as real scientists. Two real scientists talking about this idea on a podcast specifically about Star Trek is like the perfect like neutral zone territory to talk about this. Yeah the the giggle factor it's a few things it's the giggle factor related to sci-fi that sci-fi is celebrated we all love most astronomers love some kind of science fiction but we are always quick to point out that we're real scientists we're not just like speculating about whatever Arthur C. Clarke wrote about or whatever. The other issue is related to that is the sort of cranks the the pseudoscientists and the UFOologists these communities have also co-opted a lot of what would be SETI research. The saying that I heard recently about astronomy outreaches if you don't if you don't do outreach about your science the pseudoscientists will somebody will find out we'll see a tweet about it or an article you wrote and we'll misconstrue it into something that is absurd or obscene and it will end up in the weird fringes of society. SETI has been an area that has been co-opted a lot by people wearing tinfoil hats and that has caused the sort of amplification of the giggle factor. My take is that very few scientists very few astronomers would look at SETI and say like oh that is without merit wholesale. You know part of this paper is just saying this is an opportunity that I think has gone under-noticed it would be it would be unfair to say that it's totally original there were there have been a couple papers in the last 20 years that have pointed out these kinds of ideas but it's I hope a call to action for people like me people like you who have astrobiology interests to come together we work in the same department and we sort of exist in different camps. The Astrobiology Camp which thinks a lot about what life would look like and I work in sort of the software and big survey and big data group which thinks about what is it that our data can provide and what kind of products can we make out of our data and I dream of bringing those communities people together I want to bring the astrobiologists who think a lot about biology and chemistry to the table with people who are producing catalogs of supernova and exoplanets and bring them together and see what what kind of signals can