Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz

speaker

83 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 15 Jul

Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Science Friday · What will our reaction be when we discover aliens? · 15 Jul 2026 podcast

Well, one of the things that is really different now compared to in the past is the proximity of scientists to the communication of their science and also to the demand for public information of a very high profile discovery.

So, you know, the most recent example that is outside of our field that you can think of, right, is the pandemic.

We had a very high profile discovery.

scientific research effort in development of vaccines that for many of those people involved in those developments was very high risk to them personally.

There was a great deal of demand on them to communicate about the developments in science as they were happening.

And this is the kinds of questions we're interested in as well.

So just recently, the IAA SETI committee released these brand new revisions of the post-detection protocols, which are a set of guidelines about what happens if a SETI search is successful, if there's some sort of sign of intelligent, technologically advanced life found in the universe.

And one of the things that they cite is things like the fact that individual researchers should make every effort to be open and transparent about the work as it evolves, what they are learning, et cetera, but that it shouldn't be solely on them to communicate their work as it evolves because they also need to be doing the work themselves.

And in high-profile discoveries, that demand for more information can be quite intense.

We all live in the era of social media in which, you know, many scientists themselves are science communicators.

They're present on social media.

So, you know, for science and for scientists, I think there'd be a great deal of excitement.

There'd be a lot of debate because that's how science works.

And then also there would be these considerations of personal safety and how much they can communicate, etc., etc., etc.

Yeah, I think the UAP hearings and releases of information I think have been really interesting to watch.

I view anything like that with a healthy dollop of skepticism.

Number one, I think it is totally normal that we see things that are not explained publicly.

in the sky all the time, right?

And sometimes they can be incredibly mundane.

Many sort of historical UFO sightings, when people send up those lanterns that are like a paper bag with a little flame at the bottom of them, those historically create UFO sightings, et cetera.

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