August 28, 2006 Part XV: Astrobiology Life and Death on Ice-
Covered Worlds University of California, Berkeley 24 min.
(slideshow requires QCShow Player) Audio only (mp3 format) View
as a webpage (quicktime, real player) (notes) Three feet of ice
does not result from one day of cold weather. — Chinese proverb
The notion that the sciences of paleontology and astrobiology
should be somehow linked seems quite jarring at first, but it
only takes a moment's thought to see the logic in the
connection. Water is the sine qua non of life. Where liquid
water disappears, the life we know similarly disappears.
Although water is now rare on the inner planets of our solar
system, it wasn't when the system was young. Mars and Venus have
since lost their oceans, and the Earth is destined to do so as
well. But there are places where water should persist for as
long as the Sun exists. In our search for life in the solar
system, we're certainly going to look for the signs of ancient
life in the former ocean basins of the inner p