NATS 1880 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Planetary Science, Nasa Astrobiology Institute
27 Sep 2016
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Extraterrestrial life: any sign of life, simple, complex, intelligent. Or is it more earth-like? (human, mushroom, bacteria) Although multicellular life seems to only be on earth, tiny microbes might yet exist elsewhere. Physical laws of our planets are all around the universe too. Astronomical context tells us that our sun is just a star, implying that all the other stars could too have orbiting planets that host life. Planetary science: study of planets, orbits, formation, asteroids/comets. Knowing how planets are formed we might expect how common they are. Extrasolar planets: a planet that orbits a star other than our sun. discovered in 1995. We now know most stars have planets and reasonable to think they may have life. Habitable worlds: worlds that have the ingredients and conditions necessary for life (not speci cally humans but potentially even microbes). Thanks to planetary science we can understand why planets differ (temp/gases etc)
