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    Aurora Avallone
    Dash  ·  
    Apr 18, 2021
      ·  Edited: Apr 18, 2021

    What tools do we use to estimate/determine if there is extraterrestrial life? Interview with Jill Tarter

    in Space

    I found the interview with Jill Tarter to be very interesting and insightful into a realm of science that has a lot of uncertainty and much to still be discovered. The idea of extraterrestrial life has always been a fascinating one because it widens the scope of life to not just focus on us on Earth but to provide space to question and theorize whether there are other living beings beyond the confines of what we know.


    Before watching this interview, I didn’t really know how scientists went about discovering and studying extraterrestrial life, so I found it interesting that for a long time, the method best thought to do this discovering was through the use of radio waves to intercept and detect communications from possible extraterrestrial life. As this tool seemed to become less useful and accurate, Tarter mentions how the Drake equations formed an essential idea for which scientists could try to estimate the amounts of communicating extraterrestrial life within the Milky Way galaxy but then explains that she finds it to be essentially useless/ unhelpful in this study to find these possible life forms because of the increased uncertainty it presents why trying to use/apply it.


    I also found interesting from this discussion of the Drake equation that not all scientists believe in its validity and that it causes discrepancies within this scientific community. One last interesting idea that I gathered from this interview was the idea of observation versus theory and how, in this field of science, it is better to focus on making observations, that is, concrete patterns or communications, rather than trying to speculate or predetermine something or some life beyond our planet that one might try to theorize exists.




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