Tonight on Nova: Finding Life Beyond Earth

By Emily Lakdawalla
The Planetary Society

Tonight, public television stations will be airing a new, two-hour NOVA documentary, "Finding Life Beyond Earth." If you do not get American public television, I've been told that NOVA will stream the show from their website after it premieres on TV. The preview (below) looks pretty promising. They have certainly assembled a stellar bunch of planetary scientists to appear in it! (This list came in a promotional email from NASA, so it probably doesn't include lots of equally stellar scientists who appear in the documentary but don't work for NASA):

Jim Green
Ashley Davies
John Spencer
Tim Shank
Steve Squyres
Carolyn Porco
Chris McKay
Mario Livio
Josh Eisner
Geoff Marcy
Danny Glavin
Scott Sandford
Stephen Mojzsis
Sarah Stewart
Hal Levison
Jennifer Eigenbrode
and more...

And my name should be appearing in the closing credits, because I produced a few animations of Cassini images for them. Once I've watched I'll post the animations that they used. However, it's unlikely I'll be watching it live, because it's up against the first game of the World Series. Yay for DVRs!

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003229

http://youtu.be/4LWM3thutWw

Will stream later.

orbiting one very mediocre star on the edge of one so-so galaxy in the vastness of the universe is utterly preposterous.

Of course, add the qualification "as we know it," and you narrow down the possibilities enormously. However, given the environments on this planet that have been thought inhospitable to the point of being impossible for life to exist and where it absolutely does, the only conclusion is that the universe is teeming with life.

Just don't expect us to recognize it at first and certainly don't expect us to communicate with it. After all, we can't communicate with cetaceans, the other intelligent species on earth, and we share a planetary point of reference with them.

The Tikkis

Did you use any extra-terrestrial powers?

I was just passing along a blog posting by Emily Lakdawalla of The Planetary Society.

I thought putting the byline at the top would have made it clear.

Looking forward to it. I love having my mind boggled.