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MASTER CLOCK. “Biological rhythms are driven by endogenous biological clocks; in mammals, the master clock is located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus. This master pacemaker can synchronize other peripheral oscillators in several tissues such as some involved in endocrine or reproductive functions.” https://lnkd.in/dqAxc6b View in LinkedIn

TINY COMMUNITY. “The Key Issue we identify in this white paper is the small size of the trained community of SETI practitioners, and the lack of federal support for both searches for technosignatures and for growing the community.​ This issue has led to the neglect by NASA and the NSF of one of the primary avenues for pursuing a major component of the Planetary Systems thematic area of the Astro2020 Decadal process: the search for life in the universe.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

CIRCADIAN CLOCKS. “In birds, biological clock function pervades all aspects of biology, controlling daily changes in sleep: wake, visual function, song, migratory patterns and orientation, as well as seasonal patterns of reproduction, song and migration. The molecular bases for circadian clocks are highly conserved, and it is likely the avian molecular mechanisms are similar to those expressed in mammals, including humans.” https://lnkd.in/dnUbn2y View in LinkedIn

HOMELESS SUBJECT. “Technosignatures remains, however, somewhat homeless at NASA. For instance: not all searches for technosignatures are focused on planetary systems (some focus on other galaxies, or the Solar System, or on all-sky searches, for instance), and so many worthy projects will not be in-scope at XRP. And some of the inconsistencies noted by Tarter et al. (2018) persist: for instance, Exobiology still explicitly excludes radio and microwave technosignatures from its scope for no reason other than institutional inertia.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

THE TINY WORKD OF THE HUGE QUESTION. “Today, there are only two regularly scheduled graduate courses in SETI, anywhere. This lack of training is a large part of the reason the SETI community is so small.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

CALLS FOR FUNDING. “NASA should therefore provide searches for technosignatures with the same support that it long ago began providing searches for biosignatures.​ This should include workshops, special funding calls, and partnerships with academic and private research centers in addition to the traditional routes such as XRP and Exobiology. The NASA Astrobiology Institutes have reorganized, but the new Astrobiology Research Coordination Networks, especially that related to Life Detection, are natural places to embrace the search for technosignatures.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

RECOMMENDATIONS. “NASA and the NSF should welcome proposals to pursue all of these avenues and more as part of its search for life in the universe. The most natural places for these efforts is alongside searches for biosignatures under the umbrella of astrobiology, but since some SETI avenues will employ methods, like high resolution radio astronomy, that are somewhat foreign to that field, SETI work should not be ​restricted​ to that domain.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

SIMPLY GET ON WITH IT. “The best way to develop SETI as a field is to actually practice it, including the development of SETI-specific instrumentation, and innovative uses of new astronomical facilities.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

CALLS FOR CHANGE. “It is time for NASA to move on from its 1990’s aversion to SETI and nurture a new generation of astrobiologists that will lead the search for technosignatures into the future.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn

PRODDING THE BEAR. “It is thus unlikely NASA will significantly fund searches for technosignatures without ​explicit​ instruction to do so from the Astro2020 Decadal survey.” https://lnkd.in/djnMhU6 View in LinkedIn