Astrobiology is the scientific study of biological processes on the Earth and beyond. It connects research in physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy and planetary science. After centuries of speculation, we will soon have the capability of detecting ancient life or pre-biotic chemistry in the solar system, microbial life on extra-solar planets by its alteration of global atmospheric chemistry, and technological civilizations throughout the galaxy. Success in any of these areas would profoundly affect social discourse at all levels, reawakening religious questions in a new context. This series pursues these implications by bringing together voices from the relevant areas to form a new kind of interdisciplinary networking community that will encourage dialogue, research, and publication from the participants. Astrobiology has a firm scientific footing and it makes an excellent platform for gathering scientists, humanists, philosophers and theologians in an exploration of the role of humans in the universe.

Spring 2006: Life in the Nearby Universe

• TEMPLETON RESEARCH FELLOW: Simon Conway Morris, paleobiologist
  "Life’s Solution: The Predictability of Evolution and its Implications (across the Galaxy, and beyond)" - A professor of earth sciences at the University of Cambridge examines how the process of natural selection has led to myriad examples of convergent traits in life on Earth, with important implications for the possible forms of extraterrestrial life.
  • "The Ubiquity of Evolutionary Convergence: From Molecules to Societies"
  • "Eyes to See, Brains to Think: The Inevitable Evolution of Intelligence"
  • "Meeting the Aliens: Galactic Hide and Seek?"
  • "Darwin’s Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation"
• John Baross, oceanographer
  "Dark Ecosystems on Earth and Beyond" - The amazing adaptations of microbes on Earth, by professor of oceanography at the University of Washington.
• Ben Bova, writer
  "The Living Universe" - Overview of what we know about life in the universe, from the perspective of a renowned science fiction writer, and author of over 100 fiction and non-fiction books.
• Carol Cleland, philosopher
  "How to Search for Extraterrestrial Life without a Definition of Life" - A professor of philosophy from the University of Colorado tackles the issue of how we define life when we only have one example and don't know how strange life beyond Earth might be.
• Bill Grassie, executive director Metanexus Institute on Religion and Science
  "Beyond Intelligent Design, Science Debates, and Culture Wars" - A brief introduction to the theories of evolution, and a survey of some constructive theologies of evolution prominent among theologians today.
• David Grinspoon, planetary scientist
  "Searching for Life, Searching for Minds: Astrobiology and the Problem of Design in Nature" - Where astrobiology has been and where it’s going, including alien life in the popular culture, by principal scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder.
• Jonathan Lunine, planetary scientist
  "Lookin' for Life in All the Wrong Places" - The current status of the search for life in the solar system, by UA professor of planetary sciences.
• Chris McKay, planetary scientist
  "Search for a Second Genesis of Life: How and Why" - Upcoming space missions, the prospect of life on Mars and Titan, and analogs of planetary environments on Earth, by a senior scientist at NASA Ames.
• Oliver Morton, writer
  "The Afterlives of Mars" - The evocative history of Mars and its possible past lives, with the celebrated author of Mapping Mars, contributing editor at Wired, and frequent contributor to Newsweek and The Economist.
• Pattiann Rogers, poet
  “In an Open Field on a Clear Night: Life in an Expanding Universe” - A reading by distinguished poet Pattiann Rogers on the spiritual, mysterious, celebratory, and frightening elements of the living universe as we experience it today. Author of 11 collections, including "Song of the World Becoming" and the recent "Generations."
• Dava Sobel, writer
  "Lives of the Planets" - A literary and historical tour of the solar system examining the influence the planets have exerted on human imagination with the award-winning author of Longitude, Galileo's Daughter, and The Planets.
• Nick Woolf, astronomer
  "Looking for Planets, Looking for Life" - The basis of methods that will be used to discover distant earths and spectral signatures of life, and the spiritual issues that surround the understanding of life, by UA professor of astronomy.