Paul Quast

Paul Quast is a SETI/ METI scholar and independent researcher working within the fields of message construction, deep-time communication and information preservation.

His research investigates the role of human partiality within the aggregate of ‘messages’ (physical artefacts and transmission events) we dispatch into space for a variety of applications and analyses how this extant cultural signature of Earth may convey alternative impressions of our generations/ civilisation within apparent meta-message content. In addition to this expertise, he is also actively involved within developing comprehendible deep-time marker strategies for our descendants as well as proposing ethical guidelines for activities that stand to influence the indelible legacy of Earth.

He is the director of Beyond the Earth – a non-for-profit, public benefits and education foundation which aims to engineer comprehendible ‘companion guide to Earth’ artefacts. These intelligible libraries of information, placed aboard satellites near Geo-synchronous orbit, will provide a ‘bottom-up’ interpretative pidgin encyclopaedia using empirical observations for accessibility and also function as introductory marker strategies to help coordinate the archaeological of the future.