
Lecture Description
(March 9, 2010) Dr. Frank Drake discusses the program that he founded, Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and the possibility of finding extraterrestrial life in the greater universe.
Course Index
- Lecture 1: From Astrochemistry to Astrobiology
- Lecture 2: The Search for other Earths and Life in the Universe
- Lecture 3: What is Life?
- Lecture 4: Evolution
- Lecture 5: Life in Extreme Environments
- Lecture 6: How Predictable Is Evolution?
- Lecture 7: Catastrophic Impacts in Earth's History
- Lecture 8: The Search for Life on Mars
- Lecture 9: Darwin's Birthday
- Lecture 10: Life Beyond It's Planet of Origin
- Lecture 11: Biologically Reversible Exploration
- Lecture 12: Advanced Life Support Systems
- Lecture 13: A Human Place in Outer Space
- Lecture 14: A Life with SETI
Course Description
Astrobiology is at once one of the newest of scientific meta-disciplines, while at the same time encompassing some of our oldest and most profound questions. Beyond strictly utilitarian concerns, such as “what is for dinner?” and leaving offspring, asking the three great questions of astrobiology seems to be embedded in what it means to be human. While these questions are ancient questions, we now have the technological tools to grapple with them at a whole new scientific level. During recent centuries the Copernican and Darwinian Revolutions laid the way for Astrobiology. In the late 20th century such discoveries as life in extreme environments on earth, of extra-solar planets, and technological breakthroughs not the least of which was the extraordinary explosion of space exploration, resulted in the crystallization of Astrobiology as a scientific meta-discipline.