Are We Alone? The Quest For A Living World

In April, @BadAstronomer, Phil Plait, moderated a panel at Caltech entitled Quest for a Living World. Guests were: Caltech astronomy professor John Johnson, Berkeley astronomer Gibor Basri, MIT planetary astronomer Sara Seager and NASA Ames Research Center’s Tori Hoehler. The video of the panel is now available and Phil was nice enough to post it on his site today. In the event you do not read Phil’s blog, I am sharing it here. A lot of things discussed really peaked my childlike curiosity. It reminded me why I feel in love with Astronomy many many moons ago.

One of the things that really made me ponder was 1995. Phil started the discussion asking if anyone attending was born after 1995, the year the first exoplanet was discovered. And this made me think that my boys are growing up in such an amazing time. My oldest was born in 1995. When I grew up, I remember being ridiculed for having the idea that there were other Terran like planets in the Universe. The idea that our solar system and our planet class were the only ones in existence seemed preposterous to me however my opinion did not seem to be the norm among my peers. I was repeatedly told to stop watching Star Trek and to keep my head out of the clouds and firmly planted within my own atmosphere. Amazing how our understanding of the Universe has so vastly changed in such a short period of time. We live in a wonderful age of exploration and discovery and it excites me to think that my boys will grow up in a vastly different age than mine and hopefully these discoveries will increase exponentially with each new generation.

I highly recommend you set aside an hour and a half and watch the panel. It gives a lot of food for thought and excitement.

About the Author

Jules

I never know what to say in this about me sections/bios. I am a mother, geek, gamer, tech enthusiast, radio personality, actor, artist, dancer, crafter, writer, music fanatic, science fiction nut, lover of the great outdoors, and so much more.