SETI Institute Courses

Lunar Impact? Asteroid 2024 YR4 and the Risk to the Moon

1 rating

Explore asteroid 2024 YR4's potential lunar impact in 2032, JWST's role in refining impact odds, and what a kilometer-wide crater could mean for lunar science and Earth's satellites.

• YouTube
• 31 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

A Cookbook of Life: How Chemistry Might Explain Life on Other Planets

Explore groundbreaking research identifying 270+ self-replicating chemical reactions that may have sparked life on Earth and beyond, reframing our understanding of how life emerges and helping us search for extraterrestrial life.

• YouTube
• 30 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

How Ceres Froze Over - Modeling the Ice-Rich Crust of an Evolving Dwarf Planet

Explore how Ceres' subsurface ocean froze from top down, creating ice-rich surface layers through groundbreaking simulations and deformation models of this unique dwarf planet.

• YouTube
• 36 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory First Look - Stunning Images and Asteroids Aplenty

Explore the groundbreaking NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory's first stunning images of nebulae, galaxies, and newly discovered asteroids, plus insights into the upcoming LSST mission.

• YouTube
• 34 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Worlds of Fire - What Molten Exoplanets Teach Us About Planet Formation

Explore cutting-edge research on molten rocky exoplanets with fiery magma oceans, uncovering how these extreme worlds form, evolve, and reveal secrets about planetary system diversity.

• YouTube
• 35 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Life in Titan's Ocean? The Microscopic Possibility of Biomass on Saturn's Moon

Explore the potential for microscopic life in Titan's subsurface ocean and discover why Saturn's largest moon might harbor only tiny amounts of biomass, making detection challenging.

• YouTube
• 39 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Hidden Habitability - What Dawn Discovered Beneath Ceres' Icy Crust

Discover how NASA's Dawn mission revealed Ceres may have sustained habitability far longer than expected, with persistent geologic activity and brine movement beneath its icy surface.

• YouTube
• 37 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

When We Find Life - Science, Society, and Survival

Explore the societal, political, and philosophical challenges humanity will face when alien life is discovered and how to prepare for this monumental moment.

• YouTube
• 40 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Titan's Missing Deltas? What Cassini Saw and What It Didn't

Explore the puzzling absence of river deltas on Saturn's moon Titan, as researchers analyze Cassini mission data to understand why this moon's shorelines defy Earth-based geological expectations despite having rivers and methane seas.

• YouTube
• 28 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Could Aliens See Us? What Earth's Technosphere Reveals

Explore Earth's potential futures over the next millennium and discover how our technosphere might appear to alien civilizations searching for life across the galaxy.

• YouTube
• 31 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Mars' Ancient Carbon Cycle - How Rocks on Mars Tell the Story of a Vanishing Climate

Discover how NASA's Curiosity rover found rare iron carbonate minerals in Martian rocks, revealing Mars' lost atmosphere and ancient climate that parallels Earth's carbon processes.

• YouTube
• 33 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Closest Exoplanet Yet? JWST Reveals Neighboring Planet Candidate

Discover JWST's groundbreaking detection of a Saturn-mass gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A, our nearest solar twin just 4 light-years away, using advanced coronagraph techniques.

• YouTube
• 38 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Can We Recognize Alien Life? Ocean Worlds and the Search for Life

Explore how to distinguish between life and non-life in extreme environments like hydrothermal vents on ocean worlds, studying chemical gardens that mimic biological structures.

• YouTube
• 35 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Citizen Science in Astronomy - Comet 3I/ATLAS and a Disintegrating Exoplanet - Part 7

Explore citizen science astronomy through amateur observations of Comet 3I/ATLAS, disintegrating exoplanets, asteroids, and satellites with SETI Institute experts.

• YouTube
• 41 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Birth of Planets - JWST Spots Hot Mineral Condensation in a Proto-Stellar System

Discover how planets begin forming as JWST and ALMA detect silicon monoxide condensation in protoplanetary disk HOPS-315, revealing the earliest stages of rocky planet formation.

• YouTube
• 35 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video