Outside Astro and Climate Lectures and Events - for Extra Credit Attendence
(This course is still early in its life. And, the subject is still filled with unknowns. The topics list below will likely evolve before we arrive at them!)
Tue Feb 4: Introduction, syllabus, bits of Ch 1, Chapter
0 - Principles of Clear Thinking and Scientific Method , On Teaching , Ch 3.5,4: Astrology as example of bogus pseudoscience connecting life and other planets.
Tue Feb 11: What is life? How do we define it? Must it be carbon-based? (pdf) (Spr '20 Zoom recording) Watch this video on your own, for discussion next week. "Inevitable Life" video (Spr '20 Zoom Recording). Eric Smith's work on the origin of Life.
Mon Feb 17: Census day, Instructor marks and returns Census
Tue Feb 18: Discussion of "Alien Life: Will We Know it When we See It?", and how we detect exoplanet atmospheric compositions (pdf) ( Spr '20 Zoom recording)
Tue Feb 25: History of the Earth and environment: Life, advanced life, and cellular energy mechanism. (Spr '20 Zoom recording)
Tue Mar 4: History of the Earth and environment: advanced life, and cellular energy mechanism. (Spr '20 Zoom recording) . Life's Rocky Start (PBS Nova program) show in class.
Tue Mar 11: Life on our Neighbors? Solar System life prospects. Climate Change and Life, also review our quiz, (Birth of the Earth video quiz unlocks after class). Mars colonization - why it's a complete non-starter.
Tue Mar 18: Gaia or Medea? Earth life and if/how it interacts with the planet to insure its well-being and survival. Life,"Alien Life in our Solar System?" (Spr '20 Zoom Recording). On your own, "Looking for Life on Mars", (Spr '20 Zoom Recording)
Tue Mar 25: Galactic civilizations; The "Great Filter" and how value is transferred, the generality of the Power/Wealth Relation and ecology destruction. Civilization as a thermodynamic system.
Tue Apr 1: Spring Break - no class
Tue Apr 8: SETI; its history and current status, and how it interfaces with the Kepler Mission.
Tue Apr 15: The bizarre object Oumuamua - alien artifact? (Spr '20 Zoom Recording and second half Spr '20 Zoom Recording)
Tue Apr 22: Type I, II, and III Galactic civilizations. The energy considerations of galactic expansion. See YouTube videos:
Becoming a Kardeshev Type I Civilization (best)
The Kardeshev Scale Explained in 20 Minutes
The Kardeshev Scale (35 min)
Why We Might Be Alone in the Universe (25 min)
Is the Kardeshev Scale Obsolete? (13min)
Wed Apr 23 - last day for faculty to drop a student
Wed Apr 23 - Last day to submit a W withdrawl. After this, student must take a grade
Tue Apr 29: The Inflationary Multi-verse, the Anthropic
Principle and self-selection, and thoughts and evidence on Divine Creation. Then, the Lifetime of Technological Civilizations - Is life "suicidal"? Or does it typically survive adolescence? (Spr '20 Zoom recording)
Tue May 6: Review of Multi-Verse and how it argues for existence of living universes. Then, the classic version of the Drake Equation, constraints from many aspects of Earth and life (Spr '20 Zoom Recording)
Tue May 13: Continue with classic and modern Drake Equation. History of the SETI program, arguments for / against intelligent life. (Spr '20 Zoom Recording) PDF
Tue May 20: The modern Drake Equation formulation, Ward/Branlee's "Rare Earth" considerations. Discuss how often does life it hit a roadblock and never reached complexity and eventual intelligence? . (Spr '20 Zoom Recording, PDF of the presentation)
Summary PowerPoint for the Course, focusing on the lectures not on the Videos we were already quizzed on. I'll draw on this to make your last course quiz
May 26-31 - Finals Week: Final Exam
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Topics To Assemble (Instructor's notes, really)
* What is the definition of life? Is it defined by ingredients, or instead defined by behavior? Must it be made "naturally", or can it be made (e.g. AGI) by other more advanced agents and still consider it "life"? Must life be carbon-based to arise naturally?
* What are the probabilities of life to form? Does it require highly unlikely processes, or it is inevitable given reasonable planetary environments?
* What are the probabilities of life making it to cellular eukaryotic form, necessary for any possibility of complex, then intelligent life? Are there bottlenecks unlikely to be crossed?
* What is the lifetime of complex highly technological life? Is it generic that technological maturity is reached well before behavioral maturity is reached, so that essentially all "civilizations" can be expected to have a harrowing passage through adolescence where suicidal tendencies may end the technological phase?
* What are the basic principles which govern how life evolves, and will all life in the galaxy face a moment when genetic programming must be radically disobeyed in order to still survive on their finite planet?
* How likely is it that the next phase of evolution is to evolve "AGI" - Artificial General Intelligence - and that it take over the decisions and care of their makers? And what are the odds AGI creations will in fact further the advancement of their makers, rather than replace them?
* The Kepler Mission and the new statistics of planetary systems in the Galaxy. TESS, and follow up missions possible with JWT.
* The Fermi Paradox. De-coding the psychology and motivational framework of other intelligent civilizations.
* The bizarre object Omuamua and the case for it being a space craft from an interstellar civilization vs being a natural object.
* The Drake Equation - original form
* The Drake Equation - Additional terms given advancements in understanding since Frank Drake's formulation. Refinements from Peter Ward and Nolthenius.
* The Inflationary Paradigm and the self-selection nature of the laws of physics and compatibility with a living universe.
* Life - divine origin? Arguments to be brought to bear from information theory and self-consistency problems.
* All the ways in which colonizing Mars is a complete non-starter.