2019 Shoemaker Lecture with Dr. James Benford

Each year the BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science presents a special award to a leading scientist to honor the life and work of Eugene Shoemaker who, together with his wife Carolyn Shoemaker, pioneered research in the field of asteroid and comet impacts. This year, we are excited to have Dr. James Benford deliver the 2019 Eugene Shoemaker Memorial Lecture.

Abstract

A recently discovered group of nearby co-orbital objects is an attractive location for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) to locate for observing Earth. Near-Earth objects provide an ideal way to watching our world from a secure natural object that provides resources an ETI might need: materials, a firm anchor, concealment. These co-orbital objects have been little studied by astronomy and not at all by SETI or planetary radar observations. I describe the objects found thus far and propose both passive and active observations of them by optical and radio listening, radar imaging and launching probes. We might also broadcast to them.

Biography

Dr. James Benford is President of Microwave Sciences, Inc. in Lafayette, California, which does contracting and consulting in High Power Microwaves and space applications of such technologies. His interests include high power systems from conceptual designs to hardware, microwave source physics, electromagnetic power beaming for space propulsion, and experimental intense particle beams. He has a PhD in Physics at the University of California San Diego in plasma physics. He is an IEEE Fellow and an EMP Fellow. He has taught 25 courses in High power Microwaves in 9 countries. He has written 10 books. He is the lead author of High Power Microwaves, 3rd Edition (2016), a widely used textbook. In 2013, he co-edited Starship Century, dealing with the prospect of star travel, an anthology of fact & fiction. See jamesbenford.com for papers on these topics.