92 | Kevin Hand on Life Elsewhere in the Solar System

92 | Kevin Hand on Life Elsewhere in the Solar System

It's hard doing science when you only have one data point, especially when that data point is subject to an enormous selection bias. That's the situation faced by people studying the nature and prevalence of life in the universe. The only biosphere we know about is our own, and our knowing anything at all is predicated on its existence, so it's unclear how much it can teach us about the bigger picture. That's why it's so important to search for life elsewhere. Today's guest is Kevin Hand, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist who knows as much as anyone about the prospects for finding life right in our planetary backyard, on moons and planets in the Solar System. We talk about how life comes to be, and reasons why it might be lurking on Europa, Titan, or elsewhere.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Kevin Hand received his Ph.D. in Geological and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University. He is currently Deputy Chief Scientist for Solar System Exploration at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has collaborated with director James Cameron, and is a frequent consultant on films, including acting as a science advisor to the movie Europa Report. His a cofounder of Cosmos Education, a non-profit organization devoted to science education in developing countries. His new book is Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space.


Jaksot(415)

6 | Liv Boeree on Poker, Aliens, and Thinking in Probabilities

6 | Liv Boeree on Poker, Aliens, and Thinking in Probabilities

Poker, like life, is a game of incomplete information. To do well in such a game, we have to think in terms of probabilities, unpredictable strategies, and Bayesian inference. These are ideas that pla...

23 Heinä 20181h 10min

5 | Geoffrey West on Networks, Scaling, and the Pace of Life

5 | Geoffrey West on Networks, Scaling, and the Pace of Life

If you scale up an animal to twice its height, keeping everything else proportionate, its volume and weight become eight times as much. Such a scaling relation was used by J.B.S. Haldane in his famous...

16 Heinä 20181h 23min

4 |  Anthony Pinn on Humanism, Theology, and the Black Community

4 | Anthony Pinn on Humanism, Theology, and the Black Community

According to atheism, God does not exist. But religions have traditionally done much more than simply proclaim God's existence: they have provided communities, promoted the arts, handed down moral gui...

12 Heinä 20181h

3 | Alice Dreger on Sexuality, Truth, and Justice

3 | Alice Dreger on Sexuality, Truth, and Justice

The human mind loves nothing more than to build mental boxes -- categories -- and put things into them, then refuse to accept it when something doesn't fit. Nowhere is this more clear than in the idea...

11 Heinä 20181h 20min

2 | Carlo Rovelli on Quantum Mechanics, Spacetime, and Reality

2 | Carlo Rovelli on Quantum Mechanics, Spacetime, and Reality

Quantum mechanics and general relativity are the two great triumphs of twentieth-century theoretical physics. Unfortunately, they don't play well together -- despite years of effort, we currently lack...

10 Heinä 20181h 12min

1 | Carol Tavris on Mistakes, Justification, and Cognitive Dissonance

1 | Carol Tavris on Mistakes, Justification, and Cognitive Dissonance

For the first full episode of Mindscape, it's an honor to welcome social psychologist Carol Tavris. Her book with co-author Eliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), explores the effect that ...

4 Heinä 20181h 11min

Welcome to the Mindscape Podcast!

Welcome to the Mindscape Podcast!

I've decided to officially take the plunge into the world of podcasting. The new show will be called Mindscape, and will mostly consist of me talking to smart people about interesting ideas. (Occasion...

1 Heinä 201816min

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