TED talk notes #2, Jill Tarter: Why the search for alien intelligence matters

“we live on a fragile island of life”

“if we’re alone…incredible waste of space”

discovering other cultured civilizations could enhance humanity’s bonds with each other

“we’re a billion year lineage of wandering stardust”

SETI began 50 years ago

sun is one of 400 billion stars in Milky Way, among 100 billion other galaxies (!)

the more we learn the wider our “livable space” becomes (eg, the more habitable stars we’ve discovered, the more species we’ve discovered here on Earth that live in extreme environments)

SETI is the archaeology of the future (when we look into the night sky, we’re looking into our past)

on Earth, life happened quickly, Earth spent majority of its time (90+%) developing life, not waiting for it to arise

Copernican revolution changed our thinking in many areas (astronomy, physics, theology), discovery of ETI would be comparable

Drake conducted first SETI observation of distant stars

“we all belong to one tribe, Earthlings”

Here’s my ongoing list of TED talk notes. I’m now adding some old unpublished notes. #1 was a James Cameron talk.

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