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The search for aliens is shifting its criteria | Sara Seager
Posted
April 7, 2026
Views
30,434
Likes
880
Comments
72
Engagement
3.13%
April 7, 2026
30,434
880
72
3.13%
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3:08Now PlayingThis interview is an episode from The Well, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the John Templeton Foundation.
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Watch Seager’s next interview ► Why volcanoes might fool us into thinking we’ve found other intelligent life
Astrophysicist Sara Seager has spent decades expanding how we search for life beyond Earth: not by asking what we would look like out there, but by imagining forms of intelligence that may be utterly unlike our own.
Her work explores “technosignatures” — physical clues of advanced life, from satellite swarms to artificial light. As artificial intelligence accelerates here on Earth, Seager considers whether post-biological life might be what awaits us — and whether it already exists elsewhere in the cosmos. Our biggest challenge, she suggests, may be learning to see past the limits of our own imagination.
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About Sara Seager:
Professor Seager is Director for the MIT-led Venus Morning Star Missions to Venus and lead for Project Starshade. In the past she was Deputy Science Director for the MIT-led NASA mission TESS and PI for the on-orbit JPL/MIT CubeSat ASTERIA.
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