Aliens: The World's Leading Scientists On The Search For Extraterrestrial Life Free Download 1

Join Bonnie J. Buratti, a leading planetary astronomer, on this personal tour of NASA's latest discoveries. Moving through the Solar System from Mercury, Venus, Mars, past comets and asteroids and the moons of the giant planets, to Pluto, and on to exoplanets, she gives vivid descriptions of landforms that are similar to those found on Earth but that are more fantastic. Sulfur-rich volcanoes and lakes on Io, active gullies on Mars, huge ice plumes and tar-like deposits on the moons of Saturn, hydrocarbon rivers and lakes on Titan, and nitrogen glaciers on Pluto are just some of the marvels that await readers. Learn about the search for life on other planets, and discover what it is like to be involved in a major scientific enterprise, with all its pitfalls and excitement.

Aliens: The World's Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life free download 1

So how exactly do astronomers look for extraterrestrial life? Mostly, they listen for radio waves (a type of electromagnetic radiation) coming from deep space. Sound interesting? You can help researchers sift through the data!

Mixing a deeply researched fictional narrative with real documentary interviews, it features some of the world's foremost scientists and thinkers - including Dr. Jill Tarter, pioneer in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Dr. Mazlan Othman, former director of the United Nations office for Outer Space affairs.

The Mission: Find Life! exhibit at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, WA shows how astrobiologists search for life elsewhere in the Universe, studying extreme environments to understand the potential habitability of extraterrestrial environments and examining how life might arise on planets orbiting stars different from our Sun. The exhibit features research at the Virtual Planetary Laboratory and runs March 18-September 4, 2017. Videos from the exhibit can be viewed from this link.

In December 2011, high in the central Andes of Chile, NASA scientists launched the prototype Planetary Lake Lander, a testing platform for the development of robots that are capable of making scientific decisions based on the data they collect.Dr. Nathalie Cabrol leads a team of researchers working on these smart robots, which will expand our ability to search for life in the universe.

The Search for the Origin of Life takes a personal look at scientists around the United States working with the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) to understand the origin of life. Attempting the seemingly impossible, these researchers want to answer one of humanity's oldest questions - how did life begin? Travel with them to some of our planet Earth's most extreme environments - from the frozen glaciers of the Canadian Arctic, to the inhospitable thermal springs of Yellowstone National Park, and to mysterious caves in Italy.

The problem of the existence of life beyond Earth is investigated, drawing from recent research in astronomy and other fields. ASTRO 140 Life in the Universe (3) (GN)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. The possibility of life beyond Earth is one of the great unsolved puzzles of human thought and has been debated for millennia. An answer would fundamentally change the relationship between the human race to the rest of the Universe. Advances in modern physics and astrophysics have dramatically changed and enriched the understanding of our cosmic surroundings, but have not yet produced an unambiguous evidence concerning the extraterrestrial life. Yet, significant progress has been made on certain aspects of the problem. Recent observations of protoplanetary disks around young stars, planets around solar-type stars and a rapidly spinning pulsar (a Penn State discovery), and pervasive organic molecules throughout the Galaxy give tantalizing, albeit indirect, hints in favor of the existence of nonterrestrial life. "Life in the Universe" is envisioned to be an attractive choice for students who are interested in enriching and broadening their understanding of modern science. The course is highly interdisciplinary, combining evidence from several fields of science to describe our chances to encounter life beyond Earth and the Solar System. Selecting this course would be a logical choice for students who completed and enjoyed ASTRO 1 (GN), ASTRO 5 (GN), or ASTRO 10 (GN). The students are expected to reach the following goals from this course: - learn to appreciate limitations of human experience and a role of the interdisciplinary approach in solving scientific problems - gain understanding of a relationship between the physical Earth, its biosphere, and the rest of the observable Universe - examine in some detail a contemporary problem of scientific investigation: the astrophysical evidence for planets around stars other than the Sun - assess the scientific significance of searches for extraterrestrial life including technological civilizations. Lectures systematically cover the topics listed in the course outline at a level appropriate for non-science students, although students from the Planetary Science & Astronomy major, as well as other science and engineering majors, can take the course. While general understanding of astronomy from the prerequisite course is expected, the necessary physical and astrophysical concepts are reintroduced to assure a logical and coherent flow of information throughout the course. Videos are used to illustrate a number of topics, such as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, physical conditions on planets of the Solar System, the detection of planets around a neutron star, and to evaluate the scientific content of science fiction movies.

The search for life beyond planet Earth has been the subject of much interdisciplinary scientific search and has stimulated human imagination. Scientific discoveries of exoplanets (outside of our solar system), of extremophiles (life which can survive in extreme conditions) and the discoveries of conditions on other bodies in our solar system which might be able to support life, has provided progress in answering the question of the existence of extraterrestrial life. Not only have a plethora of fictional work appeared in the film media to depict scenarios of life beyond Earth, but there has also been an abundance of video media created to present the scientific ideas to the wider audience beyond the scientific community. This course intends a critical evaluation of both nonfiction and fictional media works in the educational dissemination of scientific ideas and the effective presentation of concepts. We will analyze techniques in photography, mise en scene, editing, sound, dramatization and writing as they are applied to topics in astrobiology.