Pardee Keynote Symposium P8
Exploring for Life in the Cosmos: Celebrating Five Decades of Astrobiology
Tue., 2 Nov., 1:30 p.m.
Jack D. Farmer
Cosponsored by GSA Geobiology & Geomicrobiology Division
As a term, astrobiology was first coined in the 1940s to encompass early scientific ideas about how to explore for extraterrestrial life (see Dick, S.J. and Strick. J.E., 2004, The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology: New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press). More recently, astrobiology has been more broadly defined as the scientific discipline that studies the origin, distribution, and future of life in the Cosmos. Over the past five decades, astrobiology has evolved to be a highly interdisciplinary field that seeks answers to some of humankind's most basic questions, including "How did life originate?" and "Are we alone in the universe?"
Speakers:
- Dr. G. Scott Hubbard, (Stanford University): "The historical roots of Astrobiology"
- Dr. Carl Pilcher, Director (NASA Astrobiology Institute): "Creating a new field: The NASA Astrobiology Institute"
- David Deamer, (UC Santa Cruz): "Simulating Life's Origins"
- John Baross, (University of Washington): "Limits if life, early evolution and the search for habitable planets"
- David Des Marais, (NASA Ames Research Center): "The new Mars: Astrobiology of a neighbor planet"
- Richard Greenberg, (University of Arizona): "Europa"
- Ralph Lorenz, (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab): "Titan and Enceladus: Icy cauldrons of organic synthesis"
- Paul Butler, (Carnegie Institution of Washington): "A brief history of extrasolar planet research"
Geomicrobiology; Planetary Geology; Paleontology, Diversity, Extinction, Origination