Earthlings have been using radio telescopes to search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) since 1960. Despite our continuing failure to strike SETI gold, radio waves remain an excellent medium for hypothetical interstellar communication. Of course, we might be looking for ET in all the wrong places, and perhaps even in all the wrong ways. Are anthropocentric biases misleading us? What new search strategies — and sensitive new technology — can help us finally detect that first alien technosignature that will profoundly change humanity’s self-conception?

Our Wonderfest speaker is Dan Werthimer, Chief Technologist at the Berkeley SETI Research Center. Dan has led some of Earth’s most sensitive and wide-ranging SETI efforts, and he has earned Wonderfest’s Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization.