Planets, Life, and the Universe Lecture Series
The Planets, Life, and the Universe lecture series brings high-profile speakers to the JHU/STScI campus to discuss current topics of interest in astrobiology and draws a large and steadily increasing audience. It is supported by the NASA Astrobiology Program, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Department of Biology, the Department of Chemistry, the Department of Biophysics, the Department of Physics and Astronomy of Johns Hopkins University, and the Ernst Cloos Memorial Fund from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences of Johns Hopkins University.
Planets, Life, and the Universe Lecture Series presentations are also webcast live. Webcasts can be viewed at the STScI webcast site during the scheduled presentation, and can be found afterward in the STScI webcast archive.
Organizing committee: Jocelyne DiRuggiero, Stephen Fried, Maya Gomes, Amaya Moro-Martin, Kelsey Moore, and Isabel Baker.
To suggest future speakers, please submit the PLU Lecture Series speaker suggestion form.
Filter Results
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Animal, Mineral, Microbe: How the Interplay Between Abiotic and Biotic Processes Shapes Deep-Sea Chemoautotrophic Symbioses
April 4, 2025 LecturesLiving organisms evolve in response to one another, but also to the physical and chemical conditions in their habitat. Living things, via their activity, also shape the abiotic world. This is especially...
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Characterizing the Most Common Type of Planet in the Milky Way (that is not found around the Sun)
March 14, 2025 LecturesThe last decade of exoplanet exploration revealed a population of 1-3 Earth radius planets, which we now know are the most common outcome of planet formation (within 100 day orbital periods) in the Galaxy....
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What Biogeochemical Information Is Preserved in the Lipids of Extreme Archaea?
February 7, 2025 LecturesAll life as we know it builds cell membranes that serve as an essential barrier from the external environment and facilitate the flow of matter and energy. The lipid membrane composition and its isotope...
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The Fate of Volatiles Through Earth's Accretion and the Moon-forming Giant Impact
December 6, 2024 LecturesDelivery and loss of volatile elements and compounds (such as water, carbon, nitrogen and the noble gases) during Earth’s accretion set the stage for the rest of our planet's history. Volatiles...
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Strange New Worlds
November 1, 2024 LecturesIs there a universal divide between planets with and without atmospheres? Is it based on their incident fluxes and escape velocities? By studying exoplanets that span the cosmic shoreline, we have begun...
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Enceladus's Plume-Derived 'Snow' Fall
October 4, 2024 LecturesTectonic pit chains are geologic landforms observed on many solar system bodies, and in the outer solar system they are most clearly observed on Enceladus. Pit chains form above a dilational fault or extensional...
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The Origin of Biomolecules and Information Polymers on Terrestrial Planets
April 5, 2024 LecturesThe origin of life on Earth is one of the fundamental questions of science. A critical issue is how and when biomolecules, such as building blocks of RNA and proteins, appeared after Earth formed....
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Habitability and Biosignature Preservation in Magnesium Sulfate Brines: Lessons from the “Spotted” Lakes
February 23, 2024 LecturesObservations of Mars have revealed the widespread presence of paleo-evaporitic deposits, in the form of magnesium sulfate salts. MgSO4 salts have been known to preserve evidence of life on geological...
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How Earth’s Early Oceans and Atmosphere Help Guide the Search for Life Beyond Our Solar System
February 2, 2024 LecturesLife and life-sustaining environments, including oceans, have existed on a dynamic Earth for more than four billion years despite the multitude of challenges that come with stellar, solar system, and planetary...
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How Do New Protein Structures Emerge?
December 1, 2023 LecturesThe advent of the Artificial Intelligence era has granted us unprecedented access to protein structural data. How did nature discover folded proteins more than 3 billion years ago? How do new protein structures...
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Rise of the Glass Animals (and Protozoans): Tracking the Paleozoic Transformation of the Silica Cycle by Biomineralizers
November 3, 2023 LecturesPhanerozoic oceans have witnessed the transformation of the marine silica cycle from a system primarily controlled by abiotic precipitation reactions to one in which silica biomineralization (by diatoms)...
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Exoplanet Characterization from JWST
October 6, 2023 LecturesWe are now one full year into the era of JWST, NASA’s flagship observatory and the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. Exoplanet characterization has historically been dominated by space-based...
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Exploring Early Earth and Habitability Using Ancient DNA
April 7, 2023 LecturesLife is a planetary phenomenon and it is tuned to the conditions found on our planet that enable its existence. What is tuned, specifically, is the chemistry that occurs within cells, and enzymes are what...
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Life in the Light: Photochemical Insights Towards Life as a Planetary Phenomenon
March 3, 2023 LecturesAdvances in origins-of-life chemistry are transforming our understanding of how life emerged on Earth, while upcoming space missions offer the prospect of detecting life on other worlds. Fundamental to...
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Multiscale Planetary Habitability: Analyzing the Role of Large Volcanic Eruptions and Seafloor Bathymetry
February 3, 2023 LecturesThe history of life on Earth illustrates that perturbations on a scale of 10s-100s of kyr – e.g., a single large extraterrestrial impact or large-scale volcanic event – greatly affect the viability...