Life in the Cosmic Trenches: The Search for Signs of Life beyond Earth

media release: UW Space Place announces a series of special events for the inauguration of WiCOR: The Wisconsin Center for Origins Research. WiCOR is UW-Madison's new interdisciplinary research center to investigate the origins of stars, planets, and life.  WiCOR brings together scientists from a wide range of specialties, including astronomy, chemistry, geological and atmospheric sciences, and others to advance our understanding of how the universe has produced planets like Earth and life like us.

UW Space Place has organized a series of presentations we're calling "Worlds in the Making: Origins of Stars, Planets, and Life" to introduce WiCOR to the community.  Each speaker is a WiCOR scientist who will introduce one of WiCOR's fields of study.  Each of these talks will be presented at UW Space Place, 2300 S. Park St.  For more information see spaceplace.wisc.edu.

Tuesday August 13, 7pm.  professor Coco Zhang, “Cosmic Cradles: Understanding the Formation of Stars and Planets”

Tuesday September 10, 7pm.  professor Thomas Beatty, "How Can We Find Other Life in the Universe?"

Tuesday October 8, 7pm.  professor Zoe Todd, "From Astronomy to Chemistry: Towards a continuous path for the origins of life."

Tuesday November 12, 7pm. professor Melinda Soares-Furtado, "Aging Worlds: Tracing the Evolution of Planetary Systems."

We also invite you to the UW-Madison campus kickoff event for WiCOR on Friday 20 September, 7pm, in Sterling Hall room 1310, 475 N. Charter St.  The invited speaker will be professor Sara Seager, of MIT, on "Life in the Cosmic Trenches: The Search for Signs of Life beyond Earth." The public is invited to visit Washburn Observatory for star gazing (weather permitting) after professor Seager's talk, at 8:30pm.

All the above events are free and open to the public.