| date: | 2013 June 14 (Fri) 14:00-15:30 |
| room: | CPS Conference Room |
| speaker: | Masatoshi Ohishi (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan) |
| organizer: | Tetsuo Yamamoto |
| title: | Why Not Join Astrobiology ? |
| abstract: |
“How the life emerged ? the Origin of Life” would be one of fundamental questions among the human being. “Do we exist alone in the Universe, or would there be our company on other planets?” Life consists of various compounds, and so many chemical reactions are occurring in a living cell. The evolution of life is thought to be deeply related with the past geological evolution on the Earth, which would be recorded as fossils. Thus it is easily understood that wide range interdisciplinary collaboration would be needed for understanding “life”. Such collaboration led to propose a new research field, “Astrobiology”, in the late 1990’s, which aims to investigate ”origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the Universe”. A recent study has shown that sufficient amount of “seeds for life” (amino acids, sugar, nucleic acids, and their precursors) would not be formed on the primordial Earth; exogeneous delivery of such seeds onto the primordial planet(s) would be crucial for initiating life. Astrobiology has been attracting much interest as a very hot research field. Under such the background, the number of researchers related with astrobiology has been increasing. In my talk, I plan the following: brief review of the current status of astrobiology research in Japan, showing a preliminary report on observational results to detect precursors to Glycine, talk on possible signatures for life (bio-markers) on habitable planets, a proposed idea that the homo-chirality might have been generated in the space. Finally I would like you to call for participation to astrobiology research ? an exciting field. |
| keywords: | Astrobiology, Origin of Life, Chemical Evolution, Biological Evolution |