Seth Shostak is the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. He is often the public face of SETI — and therefore the public face of the scientific search for intelligent life beyond our solar system. He is the author of Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Nathalie Cabrol is a senior research scientist and director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. She is an astrobiologist and planetary scientist. She contributed an essay on SETI for the book Aliens: The World’s Leading Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Sarah Scoles is a science journalist and former associate editor of Astronomy magazine. She is the author of Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. She is based in Denver.

John Traphagan is a professor of religious studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches a course on extraterrestrials and previously taught one on the impact the discovery of intelligent alien life might have on religion. He is the author of Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Human Imagination: SETI and the Intersection of Science, Religion, and […]

Steven Dick is an astrobiologist and editor of The Impact of Discovering Life Beyond Earth  and Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life and Theological Implications. In 2013, he gave a joint lecture on the same subject at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion.

Stephen Freeland is an evolutionary biologist and director of interdisciplinary studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He studies the interface of science and religion and gave a joint lecture in exoplanets for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion.

David Weintraub is a professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and the author of Religions and Extraterrestrial Life: How Will We Deal With It?.

Benjamin Blech is a rabbi and a professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University in New York City. He has written about what the discovery of intelligent alien life would mean to Judaism.

The Rev. James Kurzynski is a Catholic priest in the Diocese of LaCrosse, Wis., and a hobby astronomer. He writes frequently for the Vatican Observatory blog.