SETI Live
SETI Live is a weekly production of the SETI Institute and is recorded live on stream with viewers on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, X (formerly known as Twitter), and Twitch. Guests include astronomers, planetary scientists, cosmologists, and more, working on current scientific research. Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary research and education organization whose mission is to lead humanity’s quest to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the Universe and to share that knowledge with the world.
- Update frequency
- every 7 days
- Average duration
- 34 minutes
- Episodes
- 109
- Years Active
- 2023 - 2025
How Ceres Froze Over: Modeling the Ice-Rich Crust of an Evolving Dwarf Planet
Join planetary scientists Beth Johnson and Ian Pamerleau, lead author of a groundbreaking new Nature Astronomy study, for a deep dive into the icy mysteries of Ceres—the largest object in the asteroi…
Dreams of Biogenesis: A Conversation with Artist Jennifer Willet
How does life begin? This intriguing question touches on science, philosophy, and the imagination. Artist and INCUBATOR Art Lab Director Jennifer Willet created an artwork that visualizes the theorie…
NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory First Look: Stunning Images and Asteroids Aplenty
Last week, the NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory released its First Look images, including stunning views of the Trifid and Lagoon nebulae, an astounding Cosmic Treasure Chest of stars and galaxies, and a "s…
LaserSETI Update: On Exhibit in London and a New Station in Puerto Rico
A major new exhibition at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, Space: Could Life Exist Beyond Earth?, runs from May 17, 2025, to January 4, 2026, and will feature a complete LaserSETI inst…
Could Aliens See Us? What Earth’s Technosphere Reveals
🌍 What Will Earth Look Like in 1000 Years? Will humanity collapse, thrive, or colonize the stars—and could alien civilizations detect us? Join senior planetary astronomer Dr. Franck Marchis for a fas…
Mars’ Ancient Carbon Cycle: How Rocks on Mars Tell the Story of a Vanishing Climate
Join planetary scientist Beth Johnson as we explore a groundbreaking discovery from NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars. Scientists have identified siderite—a rare iron carbonate mineral—within ancient Ma…
Titan’s Missing Deltas? What Cassini Saw — and What It Didn’t
Why are Titan’s river deltas missing? Planetary astronomer Franck Marchis taps in for Beth Johnson to chat with Brown University’s Sam Birch and explore a strange and unexpected mystery on Saturn’s l…
A Cookbook of Life: How Chemistry Might Explain Life on Other Planets
What if the origin of life isn’t a one-in-a-billion cosmic fluke, but something that happens whenever the conditions are just right? Join communications specialist Beth Johnson as we explore groundbr…
Red Planet, Blue Past: How Rain Shaped the Martian Landscape
A groundbreaking study from the University of Colorado Boulder suggests that ancient Mars was far from the cold, arid planet we know today. Led by Amanda Steckel, the research team utilized computer …
Tiny Asteroids, Big Threats: JWST Reveals a Hidden World of Mini Asteroids
One significant threat to life here on Earth is the possibility that a massive asteroid will collide with our planet and destroy life as we know it. To understand the possibilities, large surveys of …
Is Intelligent Life Easy? Human-Like Life Probably Evolves "Right on Time"
A recent study proposes a new model for the evolution of intelligent life, which challenges the long-standing "hard steps" theory that the emergence of intelligent life is an exceedingly rare event …
Unistellar + Citizen Science Q&A (Part 6): Comet SWAN, Satellites, Asteroid Leona
Join Dr. Franck Marchis, Chief Science Officer and co-founder at Unistellar and director of Citizen Science at SETI Institute, and Dr. Lauren Sgro, Outreach Manager at the SETI Institute, for a conve…
Chasing Martian Microbes: A New Technique for Finding Microbial Fossils in Minerals
A road trip to a gypsum quarry in Algeria led Youcef Sellam on a journey of scientific discovery. From the road trip to an internship in Italy, he and his colleagues later discovered microbial fossil…
Why is Mars Red? New Research Suggests Ferrihydrite is the Key
In a recent study, Dr. Janice Bishop of the SETI Institute, along with postdoctoral researcher Adomas Valantinas from Brown University, propose that Mars' characteristic red hue is primarily due to f…
The Climate Chronicles with Professor Dagomar Degroot
In The Climate Chronicles, a podcast with 42 episodes across eight seasons, Professor Dagomar Degroot of Georgetown University "takes you on a journey through 50 million years of climate change." He …
Super-Earth Laboratory: Using HD 20794 d to Understand Habitability
With over 7,000 exoplanets identified in our galaxy, scientists are shifting their focus to studying these worlds' characteristics in the quest for extraterrestrial life. The backdrop for one team is…
Amino Acids on Bennu! Building Blocks for Life Detected in Asteroid Bennu Samples
The OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) mission has been a resounding success, from taking a sample of asteroid Bennu to returning t…
A PUNCH for the Sun: NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere
NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH mission, is a constellation of four small satellites in low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s corona to …
Space is the Case: A Conversation with SETI Artist in Residence Martin Wilner
During his time as an Artist in Residence (AIR) at the SETI Institute, visual artist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst Martin Wilner invited prominent SETI Institute scientists to participate in his o…
Looking for Lunar Anomalies Using Automated Methods
Over the past decade, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured thousands of high-resolution images of the Moon's surface—far more than humans can manually review. To tackle this challen…