AoT Valley of the Sun: The Problem Life Solves + Stargazing Night

Astro on Tap – Valley of the Sun is back this Wednesday with a question you have probably never been asked: *** what good does it do a planet to host life? ***Our featured speaker is Prof. Everett Shock (School of Earth and Space Exploration), who will take a planetary perspective on the emergence of life. If life is something planets do, what job is it doing for them? What problem does it solve? And could asking the question this way change how we search for life on other worlds? Everett is a geochemist who has spent decades studying how water, rock, and energy interact, from Yellowstone’s hot springs to the seafloor, so expect a talk that starts with rocks and ends somewhere much farther away.

For the second half of the night, we are heading outside. We will have telescopes set up for night-sky observing, weather permitting, and the timing could not be better: Saturn reached opposition on October 4, so it rises at sunset and is about as close and bright as it gets all year. Come join us tomorrow night to see the rings for yourself (if we are lucky!).