(January 19, 2010) Lynn Rothschild, Research Scientist NASA Astrobiology Institute Ames Research Center, discusses the need for and attempts to create an operational definition of what it means to be alive.

1. Lecture 1: From Astrochemistry to Astrobiology
2. Lecture 2: The Search for other Earths and Life in the Universe
3. Lecture 3: What is Life?
4. Lecture 4: Evolution
5. Lecture 5: Life in Extreme Environments
6. Lecture 6: How Predictable Is Evolution?
7. Lecture 7: Catastrophic Impacts in Earth's History
8. Lecture 8: The Search for Life on Mars
9. Lecture 9: Darwin's Birthday
10. Lecture 10: Life Beyond It's Planet of Origin
11. Lecture 11: Biologically Reversible Exploration
12. Lecture 12: Advanced Life Support Systems
13. Lecture 13: A Human Place in Outer Space
14. Lecture 14: A Life with SETI

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 20^th 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.