by Carl Kruse
The Silicon Valley Astronomy Series returns on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 with a presentation titled Water Above, Water Below, Water Within: The Many Roles of Water in Making Planets Habitable.
Dr. Laura Schaefer from Stanford University will provide an illustrated, non-technical lecture of the topic. It all takes place at the Smithwick Theater at Foothill College, in Los Altos, California from 7pm-8pm PST. Foothill College is off the El Monte Road exit on Freeway 280 in Los Altos.
Water is ubiquitous and its components hydrogen and oxygen are the first and fifth most abundant atoms in the universe. Water is found in abundance in many environments and finds its way into planets of all types, where it modifies the properties of everything it touches. Being crucial to life, both as a habitat and as a solvent, it also has other roles in the evolution of habitable and uninhabitable environments on a planetary scale. In this talk, Dr. Schaefer will discuss the ways in which Earth acquired its water, how water modifies the evolution and habitability of our world, and how the habitability of rocky planets orbiting other stars may be different.
Laura Schaefer is an Assistant Professor in Geological Sciences at the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University and focuses on how gases and rocks react with each other to form the atmospheres of rocky planets, both inside and outside the Solar System. She is fascinated by lava worlds and the volcanic moon Io, as well as the distant past of planet Earth and its neighbors Venus and Mars.
The lecture is cosponsored by Foothill College, The SETI Institute, the Atronomical Society of the Pacific, and Stanford’s Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.
Past lectures of the series can also be found on YouTube at: http://youtube.com/svastronomylectures and as audio podcasts at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1805595
The Carl Kruse Blog Homepage is at https://carlkruse.org
Contact: carl AT calrkruse DOT com
Other SETI-related articles include Goodbye Frank Drake and SETI Chat – AI for Good.
The blog’s last article was on Joan of Arc.
Carl Kruse’s bio is here. Carl is also active at the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason.