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Tag: astrobiology

Astrobiology origins and whakapapa Māori – a parallel

The First Nation (indigenous) peoples of Aotearoa (New Zealand) are known as the Māori. Māori have an oral tradition of reciting the Whakapapa – the genealogy of human origins back to the beginning of the Universe – recognizing the Sun, the Planets, and other stars as senior progenitors of humanity which, in these stories, included many of the stages in a process that parallels the western hypothesis of the Big Bang.

Science, education and engagement at the Astrobiology Australasia Meeting 2018

The first international astrobiology conference in New Zealand, AAM2018 was an extraordinary opportunity for engagement. In addition to the main conference, there was an informal ‘no host’ function which saw significant turn out, an astrobiology workshop for teachers held one day in advance and numerous other engagements from Dr Seth Shostak, Dr Mitch Schulte, Dr Lindsay Hays and Dr Angelica Angles.

Ready, Steady, Learn w/ Prof. Kathy Campbell: September Astrobiology lesson

KATHY CAMPBELL: SEPTEMBER 3, 2019, 97.53 MB Tuesday, September 3, 2019 Do you wake up and ponder about the grand questions of the Universe? Questions like ‘Are there other life forms?’, ‘Can we move to other planets?’, ‘What is life?’ and especially, our favourite very early in the morning before coffee: ‘Are we even real?’ Our […]

TE AO MĀRAMA meeting

Abstracts are now accepted for consideration as talks or posters for TE AO MĀRAMA MEETING – free registration. When: 24-25 October 2018, Where: The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, Auckland

Liquid water detected on Mars, can it hold life?

This week, the European Space Agency announced that radar data collected by ESA’s Mars Express point to a pond of liquid water buried under layers of ice and dust in the south polar region of Mars. There is a long way between finding liquid brine pools on Mars and finding life. However, there might be a similar place on Earth, the Blood Falls in Antarctica that originate from a hypersaline brine groundwater environment that supports an anaerobic microbial ecosystem sustained by chemical energy. Professor Ian Hawes from Waikato University explains the importance of the discovery from Mars.

A talk on asteroid preparedness. Professor Kathy Campbell

Where: Stardome Observatory, Auckland
When: 8PM, Monday, 14th of November 2016
On November the 14th, Professor Kathy Campbell will give a talk at the Auckland’s Astronomical Society monthly meeting, at the Stardome Observatory. She will talk about the ET impact event that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Professor Kathy Campbell is a geologist, expert in the history of stones.

Exoplanet atmospheres and the possibilities of finding life.

We’re getting good at finding exoplanets, but trying to find evidence of life is a little bit more complicated than I thought. It fabulously integrates the different sciences; bringing together people with various expertise to scratch their heads collectively as they try and figure out how to solve the next step in this massive conundrum. […]

Oldest Life on Earth

This is why I came so far. To see some of the oldest rocks on Earth, preserved within an extremely ancient remnant of a continental “core”, or craton in geological parlance, revealing the rocks of my field trip to be as old as 3.48 billion – that’s 3,480,000,000 – years before present. Cratons are the formative kernels, or foundational building blocks of the continents, whispering their stories about the early evolution of our planet to those who are listening. What is extra special about the rocks of the east Pilbara craton is that they contain sedimentary sequences formed in the lulls between voluminous volcanic eruptions which archive the earliest signs of life found so far on Earth. The shocker is that life was already diverse and surprisingly abundant by this time, so very long ago, hinting at a much earlier but now obscured history. So there aren’t really very many other places on Earth where one can peer into “Deep Time” to get a picture of how and where life was taking took hold, let alone to see what it looked like.