Hello, Netherlands! It’s been a busy few days. I’ve presented my talk “Beyond Little Green Men: Reimagining Alien Life Through Art and Science” at the Europlanet Congress at The Hague. Here’s a short excerpt:

When people hear the word “alien,” they often imagine little green men: humanoid beings with oversized heads, antennae, flying saucers, and ray guns. These familiar science-fiction tropes have become a form of cultural shorthand for extraterrestrial life. Rather than imagining truly unfamiliar forms of life, popular depictions of aliens frequently reproduce anthropocentric assumptions and recognizable human characteristics. At the same time, planetary science and astrobiology are rapidly expanding our understanding of the diversity of planetary environments that exist beyond Earth. As scientific knowledge of planetary systems expands, so too does the challenge of imagining what forms of life might emerge under such unfamiliar conditions. SETI and astrobiology therefore confront not only technical and scientific questions, but also conceptual and imaginative ones.

Read the entire abstract here.

This is the first time the Europlanet Congress has a session dedicated to SETI research. It’s been wonderful to meet old friends and get to know artists, researchers, and scientists who are working in Europe. The Congress also organized an art exhibition that included my Lunations print; in fact, the arts were very present during this conference. It was good to see this art-science convergence at an astronomy conference; I hope this catches on!

A few shots from the Europlanet Congress: