SETI enthusiasts to invade Santa Clara – SETIcon 08.13.10

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the SETI project, and SETI pioneer Frank Drake’s 80th birthday, the SETI Institute is throwing party/convention called SETIcon. Held over 3 days (August 13-15) at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, this year’s SETIcon will include 4 tracks of programming:

main programming panels that will include scientists, astronauts, and actors,

hard core science talks and panels similar to paper or poster presentations at a scientific conference,

an education panel/talk track interspersed with hands-on activities for young people and

a series of individual speakers in Q&A sessions, with no set talk but fielding questions from their audience.

Some of the more notable panel discussions:

• Looking for a Few Good Earths: Finding Our Counterpart Among the Stars
• Was Stephen Hawking Right: Should We Not Broadcast to Extraterrestrial Civilizations?
• Multiverses: Is One Cosmos Enough?
• Pluto Politics: Should Pluto be Considered a Planet?
• Why Are There No Tourists from Other Worlds?
• White Lab Coats and Gray Aliens: Images of Scientists and Extraterrestrials in the Popular Media
• Asteroid Armageddon: Will The Kind of Rock that Obliterated the Dinosaurs Get Us Next?
• Should Humans Explore the Moon and the Planets or Do We Leave it to Robots?
• Is Doomsday 2012 For Real or Will you Still Have to Pay Taxes in 2013?
• Do We Have to Learn Klingon: How Will We Communicate with ET?
• Secrets of the Red Planet: What Have We Learned from Mars Exploration?

A number of authors will be on-hand at various times to discuss and sign their books:

• Sean Carroll – From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time
• Andrew Fraknoi – Disney’s Wonderful World of Space
• Kevin Grazier – The Science of Dune and The Science of Michael Crichton
• Peter Jenniskens – Meteor Showers and Their Parent Comets
• Jennifer Ouellette – The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse
• Cynthia Phillips – 101 Things You Didn’t Know about DaVinci” and Space Exploration for Dummies
• Phil Plait – Bad Astronomy and Death from the Skies: These are the Ways the World Will End…
• Mary Roach – Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
• Robert J. Sawyer – Factoring Humanity” and Rollback
• Seth Shostak – Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

The conference costs $25/day or $35 for the weekend, and includes a Friday night “RockBand” party MC’d by Phil Plait. For more information and the schedule of programs, visit the official SETIcon website.