CANCELED - Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space

Note: This event has been canceled but we will be interviewing the speaker for our podcast, A Scientist Walks Into A Bar. https://viaproductions.org/podcast/

EVENT DESCRIPTION:
Where is the best place to find life beyond Earth? We often look to Mars as the most promising site in our solar system, but recent scientific missions have revealed that some of the most habitable real estate may actually lie farther away. Beneath the frozen crusts of several of the small, ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn lurk vast oceans that may have been in existence for as long as Earth, and together may contain more than fifty times its total volume of liquid water. Could there be organisms living in their depths? Kevin Peter Hand’s book “Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space” https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179513/alien-oceans reveals the science behind the thrilling quest to find out.

Kevin Peter Hand https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Hand/ is one of today’s leading NASA scientists, and his pioneering research has taken him on expeditions around the world. At this Science on Tap, he will bring together insights from planetary science, biology, and the adventures of scientists like himself to explain how we know that oceans exist within moons of the outer solar system, like Europa, Titan, and Enceladus. He’ll discuss how the exploration of Earth’s ocean is informing our understanding of the potential habitability of these icy moons, and draws lessons from what we have learned about the origins of life on our own planet to consider how life could arise on these distant worlds.