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Physics 55: Two Classes About Astrobiology Professor Henry Greenside hsg@phy.duke

Physics 55: Two Classes About Astrobiology Professor Henry Greenside hsg@phy.duke.edu. April 9, 2012. Great Scientific Question: Does Life Exist Outside of Earth?. Why life is likely elsewhere in the universe How to search for life Where are the aliens?

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Physics 55: Two Classes About Astrobiology Professor Henry Greenside hsg@phy.duke

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  1. Physics 55: Two Classes About AstrobiologyProfessor Henry Greensidehsg@phy.duke.edu April 9, 2012

  2. Great Scientific Question:Does Life Exist Outside of Earth? • Why life is likely elsewhere in the universe • How to search for life • Where are the aliens? • Travel to the stars? Not likely, not even by probes

  3. What is Life? Start with discussion:How is fire like or not like a living creature? Duke-Maryland game, 2002

  4. Brownian Motion? Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction?

  5. Is a star living or not?

  6. Characteristics of Life Requires nutrients (atoms, molecules) Requires energy (chemicals, sunlight) Requires water (???) Produces waste products Can reproduce Can respond to environmental changes Can evolve. Biologists and computer scientists have especially made progress with artificial life: evolving reproducing mutating computer codes “living” in memory of computer, viruses and ecologies spontaneously appear.

  7. Key Slide: Why life is likely elsewhere: • Same ingredients (atoms) everywhere • Life started rapidly on Earth • Laboratory experiments suggest spontaneous formation of biological molecule, comets support this. • Earth life can survive extreme environments • Earth does not seem special • 1011 stars in a galaxy, 1011 galaxies • Universe is ancient, lots of time for life to have started elsewhere

  8. Relative Abundance of the Elements: Why H-C-N-O Based Life is Likely

  9. Relative Abundance of the ElementsOn Earth's Surface

  10. What Can You Make With H, C, O, N, P? Polysaccharides (sugars) Amino acids and proteins Nucleic acids, DNA, RNA

  11. “Inner Life of a Cell” Movie

  12. Why is Life Likely: Life Appeared on Earth as Soon as Life Was Possible! Earth “born” 4.5 billion years ago Heavy bombardment sterilized Earth 4 billion years ago, life appeared shortly after, 3.85 billion years ago!

  13. Life Appeared on Earth as Soon as Life Was Possible Evidence of age: - Radiodating of fossils - Increased ratio of carbon-12 isotope to carbon-13 isotope in rocks indicates presence of life. Australian stramatolites Some are 3.5 billion years old!

  14. Two Possibilities About Rapid Appearance of Life • Life can arise easily and spontaneously. • Panspermia: life arrived on Earth from some other location, perhaps Mars or comets or from outside solar system, but that just shifts question of origin to another location (and Mars was also bombarded).

  15. Possible Example of Panspermia:Rocks from Mars on Earth Martian meteorite that crashed in Tissint, Morocco, July 2011

  16. Why Is Life Likely: Suggestive Chemistry Experiments Miller-Urey Experiment, 1953 Amino acids, nucleic acids found

  17. Why Life Might Be Likely:Extreme Forms of Life on Earth Bacterial mats Yellowstone Pitch Lake, Trinidad black smoker Extremophiles: acidophile, anaerobe, lithoautotroph, oligotroph, cryptoendolith, xerophile, piezophile, radioresistant, etc

  18. But “Advanced” Life Forms Might be Rare:Complexity Transitions Are Difficult Single cell creatures persisted in ocean for first billion years, then multi-cell creatures appeared. Dinosaurs existed for about 130,000,000 years but, to our knowledge, never developed technological civilization. Humans around 3-4 millions years, but technology arose only in last 100,000 years!

  19. Looking For Life in the Solar System Key assumption: liquid water is essential!

  20. Stellar Habitable Zone: Where Liquid Water Might Occur

  21. Habitable Zone = Goldilocks Zone

  22. Only One Other Planetary Candidate : Mars Mars Traces of water found No signs of life

  23. Water on Mars

  24. Gravitational Tides Might Allow LifeOutside the Goldilock's Zone This complicates search for life around other stars, remote moons hard to study!

  25. Life in Europa's Icy Ocean? 4th largest moon, about same size as Earth's Moon Gravitational tides warm ice, create salty ocean possibly ~60 miles deep, versus ~7 miles for Earth.

  26. Life Around Other StarsGalactic Habitable (“Goldilocks”) Zone

  27. Many Exoplanets Now Known: ~760 Planets In 600 Planetary Systems!

  28. Not Know Yet if Earth-Like Planets Are Rare

  29. Searching For ExolifeTerrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) Block light from star, observe planets directly!

  30. Look Spectroscopically for Biosignatures Water vapor Excess oxygen Excess methane (found on Mars!) Complex molecules like chlorophyll

  31. Infrared Spectroscopic Signature of Life Based onSolar Sysem

  32. SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

  33. Drake Equation: How To Estimate NumberOf Intelligent Civilizations in Galaxy

  34. How To Search For Intelligent Life Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico

  35. How to Communicate?

  36. Interstellar Travel: Implications for SETI

  37. How to Communicate: Lincos? ?

  38. How to Communicate?

  39. Where is Everybody? Galaxy has radius of 50,000 light-years so time to colonize less than ten million years with v ~ 0.1c, ok grant 100,000,000 years, still much less than 1/10 age of universe!

  40. Travel to the Stars by Fusion

  41. Implications • We are the only technological civilization in the Milky Way. • Civilizations are common but it's hard to colonize space (interstellar travel is hard! • There is a galactic civilization but it is hiding from us.

  42. Why is the search for life worthwhile?

  43. Class Discussion: are snowflakes alive? Prof Kenneth Libbrecht. Caltech www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/

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