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.

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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.


Episoder(420)

96 | Lina Necib on What and Where the Dark Matter Is

96 | Lina Necib on What and Where the Dark Matter Is

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11 Mai 20201h 21min

95 | Liam Kofi Bright on Knowledge, Truth, and Science

95 | Liam Kofi Bright on Knowledge, Truth, and Science

Everybody talks about the truth, but nobody does anything about it. And to be honest, how we talk about truth — what it is, and how to get there — can be a little sloppy at times. Philosophy to the re...

4 Mai 20201h 35min

94 | Stuart Russell on Making Artificial Intelligence Compatible with Humans

94 | Stuart Russell on Making Artificial Intelligence Compatible with Humans

Artificial intelligence has made great strides of late, in areas as diverse as playing Go and recognizing pictures of dogs. We still seem to be a ways away from AI that is "intelligent" in the human s...

27 Apr 20201h 27min

93 | Rae Wynn-Grant on Bears, Humans, and Other Predators

93 | Rae Wynn-Grant on Bears, Humans, and Other Predators

Human beings have a strange fascination with dangerous, predatory animals — bears, lions, wolves, sharks, and more. The top of the food chain is an interesting and precarious place to live; while you ...

20 Apr 20201h 2min

91 | Scott Barry Kaufman on the Psychology of Transcendence

91 | Scott Barry Kaufman on the Psychology of Transcendence

If one of the ambitious goals of philosophy is to determine the meaning of life, one of the ambitious goals of psychology is to tell us how to achieve it. An influential work in this direction was Abr...

6 Apr 20201h 19min

90 | David Kaiser on Science, Money, and Power

90 | David Kaiser on Science, Money, and Power

Science costs money. And for a brief, glorious period between the start of the Manhattan Project in 1939 and the cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider in 1993, physics was awash in it, la...

30 Mar 20201h 34min

89 | Lera Boroditsky on Language, Thought, Space, and Time

89 | Lera Boroditsky on Language, Thought, Space, and Time

What direction does time point in? None, really, although some people might subconsciously put the past on the left and the future on the right, or the past behind themselves and the future in front, ...

23 Mar 20201h 28min

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