Innovation in space discoveries – is there life out there?
Lynn J. Rothschild – scientist at NASA  and professor at Stanford University – visits the University of Bergen Thursday this week and will give a guest lecture on the possibilities of life in space.
Each recent report of liquid water existing elsewhere in the solar system has reverberated through the international press and excited the imagination of humankind. Why? Because in the last few decades we have come to realize that where there is liquid water on Earth, virtually no matter what the physical conditions, there is life.Â
Lynn J. Rothschild (source: Wikipedia)
Each recent report of liquid water existing elsewhere in the solar system has reverberated through the international press and excited the imagination of humankind. Why? Because in the last few decades we have come to realize that where there is liquid water on Earth, virtually no matter what the physical conditions, there is life.Â
What we previously thought of as insurmountable physical and chemical barriers to life, we now see as yet another niche harboring “extremophiles”. This realization, coupled with new data on the survival of microbes in the space environment and modeling of the potential for transfer of life between celestial bodies, suggests that life could be more common than previously thought. The lecture critically examines what it means to be an extremophile, the implications of this for evolution, biotechnology, and especially the search for life in the cosmos.
What we previously thought of as insurmountable physical and chemical barriers to life, we now see as yet another niche harboring “extremophiles”. This realization, coupled with new data on the survival of microbes in the space environment and modeling of the potential for transfer of life between celestial bodies, suggests that life could be more common than previously thought.