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Nov 2007
41m 23s

Lecture 46: Are We Alone? Life in the Un...

Richard Pogge
About this episode
Are we alone in the Universe? This lecture explores the question of how we might go about finding life on planets around other stars. Rather than talking about speculative ideas, like the Drake Equation or SETI, I am instead taking the approach of posing it as a problem of what to look for among the exoplanets we have been discovering in huge numbers in t ... Show More
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Nov 2007
Lecture 45: Exoplanets - Planets Around Other Stars
Are there planets around other stars? Are there Earth-like planets around other stars? Do any of those harbor life? Intelligent life? We'd like to know the answers to all of these questions, and in recent years we've made great progress towards at least answering the first. To da ... Show More
43m 54s
Nov 2007
Lecture 44: Comets
Comets are chance visitors from the icy reaches of the outer Solar System. In this lecture I describe the properties of comets, their historical importance, and introduce the "dirty snowball" model of a comet nucleus. At the end of class I created a model of a comet nucleus from ... Show More
37m 59s
Nov 2007
Lecture 43: Icy Worlds of the Outer Solar System
Beyond the orbit of Neptune lies the realm of the icy worlds, ranging in size from Neptune's giant moon Triton and the dwarf planets Pluto and Eris, all the way down to the nuclei of comets a few kilometers across. This lecture discussed the icy bodies of the Trans-Neptunian regi ... Show More
36m 29s
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