NASA Technosignatures Workshop 2018
The first NASA Technosignatures Workshop (NTW18, or #technosigs18) will be held between September 26–28, 2018 at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston, TX. This workshop, the first of its kind supported by NASA, is facilitated by NExSS and LPI and will seek to bring together leading experts from NASA and US and international academic institutions, as well as the private and philanthropic sectors, to address some the most pressing questions in contemporary technosignature research:
- Define the current state of the technosignature field. What experiments have occurred? What is the state-of-the-art for technosignature detection? What limits do we currently have on technosignatures?
- Understand the advances coming near-term in the technosignature field. What assets are in place that can be applied to the search for technosignatures? What planned and funded projects will advance the state-of-the-art in future years, and what is the nature of that advancement?
- Understand the future potential of the technosignature field. What new surveys, new instruments, technology development, new data-mining algorithms, new theory and modeling, etc., would be important for future advances in the field?
- What role can NASA partnerships with the private sector and philanthropic organizations play in advancing our understanding of the technosignatures field?
In-person participation is limited by the venue size and budget to ~50 participants, selected on the basis of their expertise in the field. However, adopting NASA's 'Workshop Without Walls' approach, a live webcast with chat capability will be available for online participants. Details, including dial-in information, can be found on the LPI page.