Lecture 13: What is Life?

Cells are the basic structural and functional unit of all life on Earth. This lecture reviews the basic building blocks of cells, the main chemical components, the two basic types of cells (Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes), and introduces the Phylogenetic Tree of Life, the way biologi ...  Afficher plus

What is the basic chemistry of living organisms? We introduce the requirements for metabolism (raw materials and energy), the ATP/ADP energy cycle in cells, auto- and heterotrophs, photosynthesis and chemosynthesis, and the role played by liquid water. The goal of today's lecture ...  Afficher plus

How can we search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and what are we looking for? This second part of a 2-part lecture picks up where we left off yesterday by examining SETI, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, and reviews what we might look for and how. We will use thi ...  Afficher plus

What is Astronomy? What is Science? What is the course all about? Brief introductory remarks after going over course mechanics on the first day of Astronomy 161 for Autumn Quarter 2007. Recorded 2007 Sep 19 in 1000 McPherson Lab on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University ...  Afficher plus

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 t ...  Afficher plus