Lecture 44: The Future of Life in the Solar S...

How will life, the Universe, and everything end? This lecture looks at the evolution of our expanding Universe to project the prospects for life into the distant cosmological future. Recent observations show that we live in an infinite, accelerating universe. I will trace the evo ...  Show more

Course finale and summary. We look back over where we've been the last eleven weeks, and bring together all of the main themes of this course on Life in the Universe. Recorded live on 2009 Dec 4 in Room 1005 Smith Laboratory on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University. 

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 ...  Show more

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 ...  Show more

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 ...  Show more

What are our units of measure in astronomy? To begin our exploration of astronomy, we first need to develop a common language for notating large numbers, and introduce the basic units of length, mass, and time that we will use throughout the quarter. This lecture is a quick revie ...  Show more