Happy Mother's Day

Seriously, go give her a call, or a hug, or take her out to dinner. Unless you are a mom, then I hope you have a swell day.

On a side note, my presentation when pretty well last night. The youth group seemed to enjoy it, they were mostly in high schools, a couple in middle school. They were pretty smart too, and I always enjoy talking with a smart group of kids, it always leads to an interesting dialogue. And when it comes to alien life, they have some pretty amazing ideas.

But as amazing as some of those ideas are, I have to remind them the importance of science and needing factual evidence. Some of them were even smart enough to talk about shadow biomes: life that may exist on Earth, but we don't recognize as life because it doesn't constitute the classical idea of what is alive. Sure they are a fun idea to think about, but when looking for life in the Universe, it's going to be very hard to find them if we can't identify shadow biomes on the Earth. No, life seems more acclimated to needing water and external energy and the way it thrives here. And looking for Earth-like environments will be be the best indicators of life, mostly because those environments stand out so clearly from the alternatives.

It may also be that the majority of life lives in subsurface oceans of icy bodies. We now know of a number of moons with subsurface oceans, including Europa, Titan, Ganymede, Enceladus. And there probably are more. In fact, tomorrow I am planning to address that idea on the asteroid/dwarf planet Ceres. But these environments would have a hint of Earth-like influence, the would have water and an energy source (usually tidal heating caused by the friction of orbiting a large planet, or internal heat and radioactivity).

Life is an amazing thing to talk about, and I enjoy reflecting on these presentations after I give them. And I thought I'd just share a bit of that internal thought process. Plus, everyone alive owes it to their mother, so that's always relevant and something to be thankful for.

Another thing, I am thinking about entering the world of podcasting! Specifically the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. Their goal is to provide a different 5-10 minutes podcast everyday from anyone interested in talking about an astronomy related topic. They vary from the professional to the amateur, both in astronomy knowledge and in podcast recording quality. I have listened to a few and they are quite amazing, but they are lacking on volunteers to fill up days. Anyways, anyone is capably of signing up and doing a podcast. There's no commitment to how many I would have to do, but it can't be more often then once a month with them.

Posted in Life,Moons,Mothers Day,Outreach,Podcasting 10 comments