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S.A.G.A.N.
SAGANet (Social Action for Grassroots Astrobiology Network) is a social and collaborative web platform created to connect scientists and science enthusiasts who share interests in the research and culture of astrobiology. Background SAGANet was founded in 2011 by Blue Marble Space Institute of Science scientists Zach Adam, Julia DeMarines, Heshan Illangkoon, Betül Kaçar, Sanjoy Som, and Sara Imari Walker. It was officially launched on April 12, 2012 (51 years after the first Yuri Gagarin, launch of a human into space and 31 years after the first launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-1)), and was announced publicly at the 2012 Astrobiology Science Conference. SAGANet is named after the late Carl Sagan (The acronym is used with courtesy of the Carl Sagan Foundation) and builds upon his vision of a citizenry actively engaged in learning about the cosmos. SAGANet is designed to be an immersive virtual community where members interact in an environment of shared lear ...
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Sara Imari Walker
Sara Imari Walker is an American Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist and Astrobiology, astrobiologist with research interests in the origins of life, astrobiology, physics of life, emergence, complex and dynamical systems, and artificial life. Walker is currently Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University, Associate Director of the ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems and an associate professor at Arizona State University (ASU). She is a co-founder of the astrobiology social network S.A.G.A.N., SAGANet.org, and on the board of directors for Blue Marble Space a nonprofit education and science organization. She has appeared on multiple media sources, such as Through the Wormhole, "Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman", to communicate science to the public. Education and background Walker was born and raised in Connecticut. She studied at the Florida Institute of Technology where she graduated cum laude ear ...
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Astrobiology
Astrobiology, and the related field of exobiology, is an interdisciplinary scientific field that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. Astrobiology is the multidisciplinary field that investigates the deterministic conditions and contingent events with which life arises, distributes, and evolves in the universe. Astrobiology makes use of molecular biology, biophysics, biochemistry, chemistry, astronomy, physical cosmology, exoplanetology, geology, paleontology, and ichnology to investigate the possibility of life on other worlds and help recognize biospheres that might be different from that on Earth. The origin and early evolution of life is an inseparable part of the discipline of astrobiology. Astrobiology concerns itself with interpretation of existing scientific data, and although speculation is entertained to give context, astrobiology concerns itself primarily with hypotheses that fit firmly into existing scientific ...
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Betül Kaçar
Betül Kacar is a Turkish-American astrobiologist and an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin. She directs a NASA Astrobiology Research Center exploring the essential attributes of life, its origins and how they should shape our notions of habitability and the search for life on other worlds. Education and Career Kacar was born in Istanbul. She was the first woman in her family to receive formal education. She studied chemistry at Marmara University. She received Howard Hughes Medical Institute undergraduate fellowship to spend a summer conducting scientific research in Emory University studying organic chemistry. She returned to Emory University in 2004, and eventually earned a PhD in Biomolecular Chemistry in 2010 in enzyme structure-function relationship. Kacar transitioned to study origins of life after Ph.D. She was appointed as a NASA postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2010. She was awarded a NASA scholarship in 2011, followed by fun ...
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Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin; Gagarin's first name is sometimes transliterated as ''Yuriy'', ''Youri'', or ''Yury''. (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space. Travelling in the Vostok 1 capsule, Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. By achieving this major milestone in the Space Race he became an international celebrity, and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, his nation's highest honour. Gagarin was born in the Russian village of Klushino, and in his youth was a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy. He later joined the Soviet Air Forces as a pilot and was stationed at the Luostari/Pechenga (air base), Luostari Air Base, near the Norwegian border, before his selection for the Soviet space programme with five other cosmonauts. Following his spaceflight, Gagarin became deputy training director of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, Cos ...
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Space Shuttle Columbia
Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' (OV-102) was a Space Shuttle orbiter manufactured by Rockwell International and operated by NASA. Named after the Columbia Rediviva, first American ship to circumnavigate the upper North American Pacific coast and the Columbia (personification), female personification of the United States, ''Columbia'' was the first of five Space Shuttle orbiters to fly in space, debuting the Space Shuttle, Space Shuttle launch vehicle on STS-1, its maiden flight in April 1981. As only the second full-scale orbiter to be manufactured after the Approach and Landing Tests, Approach and Landing Test vehicle ''Space Shuttle Enterprise, Enterprise'', ''Columbia'' retained unique features indicative of its experimental design compared to later orbiters, such as test instrumentation and distinctive black Chine (aeronautics), chines. In addition to a heavier fuselage and the retention of an internal airlock throughout its lifetime, these made ''Columbia'' the heaviest of the fi ...
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Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the hypothesis, accepted since, that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to, and calculated using, the greenhouse effect.Extract of page 14
Initially an assistant professor at
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David Grinspoon
David H. Grinspoon (born 1959) is an American astrobiologist. He is Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and was the former inaugural Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology for 2012-2013. His research focuses on comparative planetology, with a focus on climate evolution on Earth-like planets and implications for habitability. He has also studied, written and lectured on the human influence on Earth, as seen in cosmic perspective. He has published four books, ''Venus Revealed'', which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times book prize, ''Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life'', which won the 2004 PEN literary award for nonfiction, ''Earth in Human Hands'', which was named one of NPR's Science Friday "Best Science Books of 2016" and ''Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto'', co-authored with Alan Stern. He is adjunct professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Science at the University of Colorado. Ea ...
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Paul Davies
Paul Charles William Davies (born 22 April 1946) is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, a professor in Arizona State University and Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He is affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Studies in Chapman University in California. He previously held academic appointments in the University of Cambridge, University College London, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Adelaide and Macquarie University. His research interests are in the fields of cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. In 2005, he took up the chair of the SETI: Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup of the International Academy of Astronautics. Davies serves on the Advisory Council of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Education Born on 22 April 1946, Davies was brought up in Finchley, London. He attended Woodhouse Grammar School and studied physics at University College London, gaining a Bachelor o ...
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Susan Schneider
Susan Lynn Schneider is an American academic and public philosopher. She is the founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University where she also holds the William F. Dietrich Distinguished Professorship. Schneider has also held the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation at NASA and the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress. Education Schneider graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 1993 with a B.A. (honors) in Economics. She then went to Rutgers University where she worked with Jerry Fodor, graduating with a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2003. Career Schneider taught at Moravian College as an assistant professor of philosophy from 2003–2006. She was an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania from 2006-2012. She became an associate professor of philosophy and cognitive science at the University of Connecticut in 2012 where ...
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Kevin Hand
Kevin Hand is an astrobiologist and planetary scientist at JPL. He is also the founder of Cosmos Education and was its president until 2007. He was working at NASA Ames when he was inspired to form Cosmos Education in 1999 after getting a grant from the Earth and Space Foundation to tour African schools to talk about how education relates to space research. Education and career Hand studied psychology and physics as an undergraduate at Dartmouth. He earned a master's degree at Stanford University in mechanical engineering while also working as a public policy research associate at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He chose the question of whether Europa's putative ocean could harbor life as his Geological & Environmental Sciences PhD dissertation topic, under the direction of Christopher Chyba, earning the doctorate in 2007. While a PhD student, he was chosen by James Cameron to take marine biology samples from hydrothermal vents in ...
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Charles S
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English language, English and French language, French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "free man". The Old English descendant of this word was ''Churl, Ċearl'' or ''Ċeorl'', as the name of King Cearl of Mercia, that disappeared after the Norman conquest of England. The name was notably borne by Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and was at the time Latinisation of names, Latinized as ''Karolus'' (as in ''Vita Karoli Magni''), later also as ''Carolus (other), Carolus''. Some Germanic languages, for example Dutch language, Dutch and German language, German, have retained the word in two separate senses. In the particular case of Dutch, ''Karel'' refers to the given name, whereas the noun ''kerel'' means "a bloke, fellow, man". Etymology The name's etymology is a Common ...
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Elizabeth Turtle
Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle is a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Education Turtle earned her B.S. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989. She earned her Ph.D. in planetary science from the University of Arizona in 1998. Research After earning her Ph.D., Turtle worked at the university in the Department of Planetary Sciences and at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. She joined the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland in 2006. Turtle was an associate of the imaging team on the Galileo mission and an associate of the imaging and RADAR teams on the Cassini mission. She also serves as a co-investigator working with the camera on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. She has co-authored many scholarly articles about planetary impact features, surface processes, and planetary imaging and mapping. Turtle is the Principal Investigator on the Eu ...
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