SETIcon

You know you've made it when your institution has its first "con." Such as it is with the S.E.T.I Institute in Mountain View, CA. SETIcon, as it is called, will be taking place in Santa Clara, CA on August 13-15 with a great line-up of speakers. I'm just hoping they will have a way to make a video record of the speakers available to those of us who are unable to attend. Just a few of the speakers on the agenda include former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, Jill Tarter the SETI Institute's director and inspiration for Jodie Foster's character in the film Contact, Isaac Asimov's daughter Robyn Asimov, and SETI Radio host Seth Shostak.

Though I knew of its existence in its early stages I didn't became acutely aware of S.E.T.I. and its work until I read Carl Sagan's first and only novel Contact. Once the movie premiered I was stunned at its profoundness and how it put our thinking on the possibility of extraterrestrial life in a context I had not considered: that of the vast distances involved in our stellar neighborhood and our isolated position relative to the rest of the stellar population in the Milky Way.

Now with the Internet community such as it is I am a devout follower of S.E.T.I.'s work and am able to stay up to date on the various projects and work taking place there. It will be fun to post about S.E.T.I. events and their work whenever something interesting comes along.

Let's hope one of those "events" will be the one that tells us we have a galactic "neighbor."