Spring 2014 Free Astrobiology Public Lecture! Thursday, May 22nd, 2014
Finding Life: On Earth, on Mars, and throughout the Cosmos with Dr. Steven Benner How do we define “life”? This fundamental question has remained largely philosophical, because it has been asked for so long, by so many, and with so few concrete conclusions. In this talk, Dr. Benner will take a different tack. He will show how laboratory studies to create a second example of life help us develop a firmer scientific understanding of what life is. The challenge of “synthetic biology” is on! Dr. Benner will discuss how we are hitchhiking on rockets, rovers, and telescopes to find life elsewhere in the Solar System, and will describe how his research team is working to develop that second example of life in laboratories here on Earth, one step at a time.
Can Non-photosynthetic Life Be Seen From Space? — A Research Rotation Report Because astrobiology requires expertise from many different fields, one of the aims of the UWAB curriculum is to train students how to collaborate with researchers in disciplines other than their own. In our Dual Title PhD program, students complete a research project outside their home discipline that allows them to learn new skills and techniques, as well as gain a broader understanding of their primary research area. In this retrospective, graduate student Eddie Schwieterman (Astronomy) describes the work on spectroscopic “biosignatures”—or signs of life—that he completed during his rotation last year at the UK Centre for Astrobiology in Scotland.
From Life in Ice to Finding Earth‘s Cousin — Our Research Highlights How does life survive in some of the coldest and saltiest places on Earth? How close are we to finding another planet like Earth? Our astrobiologists have been hard at work trying to answer these and other questions! Here are a handful of recent research highlights from the UWAB community.
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Nicole Evans Program Assistant, UWAB evansn@astro.washington.edu
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