October 21
Search for Habitability and Life in the Ocean Worlds of our Solar System
Speaker: Dr. Jonathan Lunine, Chief Scientist, NASA JPL
Abstract: The exploration of the outer solar system in the past half-century has revealed multiple worlds with oceans of liquid water and, in one case, seas of liquid methane and ethane (Titan). Enceladus has an ocean whose ingredients seem to satisfy the basic requirements for supporting life. Europa has a vast ocean whose habitability will be explored at the end of this decade by Europa Clipper. And the proposition that a form of biology could have evolved in the methane seas of Titan stretches the limits of what we might call life. I will take us on a tour of what we know and need to know in the search for life beyond Earth.
Host: Dr. Lori Feaga