Scientists are bringing the search for life beyond the bounds of
our blue, green planet right into UCLA’s backyard today.
Schoenberg Music Hall will resonate with the voices of
inquisitive community members as UCLA welcomes scientists from all
over the country for the 16th annual Center for the Study of
Evolution and the Origin of Life Symposium.
This year’s topic is “Astrobiology: Life Among the
Stars,” featuring six panelists who will talk about the ways
scientists search for planets that might be (or might once have
been) capable of supporting life, said Edward Wright, a UCLA
professor of astronomy and co-organizer of the event.
The symposium is designed to attract students of all disciplines
and members of the general public, especially those interested in
astronomy from a philosophical point of view, said panelist Lynne
Hillenbrand, assistant professor of astronomy at the California
Institute of Technology.
“It’s a very timely set of questions and
inquiries,” Hillenbrand said. “Everyone has a desire at
some level … to understand the questions about the origins of
life.”
The event was organized by UCLA’s Center for the Study of
Evolution and the Origin of Life, a division of the UC-wide
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics which promotes
interdisciplinary learning by bringing together scholars from
different disciplines.
“We worry about the origin and evolution of almost
everything … the universe, the solar system, the environment …
,” said William Schopf, UCLA professor of paleobiology and
director of the center.
The combination of approaches to finding the origin of life
allows people to get a much fuller understanding of what we know
about planets besides Earth, said Jon Jenkins, co-investigator on
the NASA Ames’ Kepler Discovery Mission at the SETI (Search
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute.
“It’s always good to have people tackling the
problem from different perspectives,” said panelist David
Stevenson, a professor of planetary science at the California
Institute of Technology.
Former NASA administrator Daniel Goldin and Charles Elachi,
director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will also speak
at the symposium.
“Some of the most interesting science that gets done
happens between the boundaries … the places where biology and
physics rub up against one another,” said Steven Squyres, a
professor of astronomy at Cornell University who will present the
latest results from the Mars Explorer Rover Mission.
Squyres said he wants to convey the sense of adventure he felt
as principal investigator of a mission whose 90-day foray onto the
Martian surface in January 2004 has expanded into a quest of more
than a year long.
“It’s been a hell of an adventure,” Squyres
said.
Mars’ surface is now too cold and too dry to support life,
Squyres said. But one of the two rovers has found rocks marked with
ripples on their surfaces, indicating that at one point these
Martian rocks were drenched with water.
Other panelists will talk about the search for habitable planets
even farther from home ““ those beyond the bounds of our solar
system.
Jenkins explained how scientists can look for the tell-tale
signs of an Earth-like atmosphere from hundreds of light years away
by looking at the planet’s reflected light, which tells them
what chemicals make up its atmosphere.
The question of whether life exists on other planets is, at this
point, “entirely speculation,” Jenkins said.
He explained the conditions that allowed us to come about seem
to have required a series of extraordinary circumstances.
“I would bet ““ not my 401K ““ but I would bet
on the existence of life on other planetary galaxies,”
Jenkins said.
Squyres said he tries to keep an open mind about the question of
whether we are alone in the universe.
“One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a scientist
is to have a belief about the answer to a question like
that,” Squyres said. “It can bias your
judgement.”
Hillenbrand said scientists are a long way away from finding
intelligent life on other planets. But although it is improbable
that we will find a signal from life on other planets, Hillenbrand
said it is good for someone to be asking these questions.