The Search for New Life Forms?
ACT WISENET member, Dr Miriam Baltuck, Science and Technology Adviser, US Embassy, Canberra, and NASA Scientist, delivered the Toyota-ANU Public Lecture entitled Life Beyond Earth! at the Australian National University on Thursday the 14th November. A decade ago the idea of detecting life beyond earth was hard to defend. The mere concept was greeted with skepticism and there was little hard data to support it. Over the last few years the discovery of planets beyond our solar system, the announcement of fossil life in a meteorite from Mars, and a better understanding of what is necessary to life on earth have led to a different focus: the search for life beyond Earth has become a search for water. In her talk, Miriam traced the path in scientific thought from complacency about Earth ’s uniqueness to recent results from Mars which challenge that thinking. She outlined the current suite of international spaceflight projects designed to find life beyond Earth, and discussed Australia’s critical role in these undertakings.
(Miriam’s contact email: baltuckm@state.gov)