Cosmic Evolution, Astrobiology, and the Societal Impact of Finding Extraterrestrial Intelligence

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The search for life beyond Earth must be placed in the context of 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution.  In this lecture, former NASA Chief Historian Steven J. Dick will give a brief overview of astrobiology, which encompasses planetary science, the search for exoplanets, origins of life, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. He then will review the possible discovery scenarios, whether microbial or intelligent, near (UFOs!) or far (radio signals), biological or postbiological (AI!).
 
Finally, he will discuss the possible impacts on society, which very much depend on the mode of discovery.  These include theological, philosophical and ethical impacts.  How should we interact with extraterrestrials? Should we message ET and should we reply to ET?  If so who speaks for Earth?  Human destiny is very different if we live in a biological universe full of life, a postbiological universe, or a universe in which we are alone. 

The speaker
 
Steven J. Dick, PhD, served as the NASA Chief Historian and Director of the NASA History Office from 2003 to 2009, and prior to that as an astronomer and historian of science at the U.S. Naval Observatory for more than two decades, where he wrote the Observatory’s history, Sky and Ocean Joined: The U. S. Naval Observatory, 1830-2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2003). He has held the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress, and has testified before the United States Congress on the subject of astrobiology. He has also held the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the National Air and Space Museum.
 
Dick is the author or editor of 25 books, including most recently Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact, (Cambridge, 2018), Classifying the Cosmos: How We Can Make Sense of the Celestial Landscape (Springer, 2019), and Space, Time, and Aliens: Collected Works on Cosmos and Culture (Springer, 2020). He has served as Chair of the Historical Astronomical Division of the AAS, and President of Commission 41 (History of Astronomy) of the IAU. He received the LeRoy E. Doggett Prize from the American Astronomical Society for a career that has significantly influenced the field of the history of astronomy. He is an elected Fellow of the AAS and the AAAS. Minor planet 6544 Stevendick is named in his honor.