ASTR3800: Astrobiology

Lecture notes for ASTR 3800 Astrobiology at Valdosta State University. This course is designed using material from Fundamental Planetary Science, Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World and Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology, where it will include summaries of the course material and code implementation/exercises. The course is divided into three sections (Basic Planetary Science; Origins of Life; and Life on Habitable Worlds).

The following chapters are used from Fundamental Planetary Science by Lissauer & de Pater:

• 1 Introduction

• 2 Dynamics

• 3 Physics and Astrophysics

• 4 Solar Heating and Energy Transport

• 5 Planetary Atmospheres

• 16 Planets and Life

  • 16.6 Planetary Requirements for Life

  • 16.8 How Life Affects Planets

  • 16.9 Origin of Life

  • 16.10 Darwinian Evolution

The following chapters are used from Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World by Lunine:

• 4 Fusion, fission, sunlight and element formation

• 11 The Hadean Earth

• 14 The first greenhouse crisis: the faint young Sun

• 17 The oxygen revolution

• 19 Climate Change across the Phanerozoic

Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology has many authors, where the following contributions are used:

• 5 Does ‘life’ have a definition? (Cleland & Chyba)

• 6 Origin of life: the crucial issues (Shapiro)

• 10 Evolution: a defining feature of life (Baross)

• 11 Evolution of metabolism and early microbial communities (Leigh, Stahl, & Staley)

• 12 The earliest records of life on Earth (Buick)

• 13 The origin and diversification of eukaryotes (Sogin, Patterson, & McArthur)

• 14 Limits of carbon life on Earth and elsewhere (Baross, Huber, & Schrenk)

• 16 The evolution and diversification of life (Awramik & McNamara)

• 17 Mass extinctions (Ward)

• 18 Mars (Jakosky, Westall, & Brack)

• 19 Europa (Chyba & Phillips)

• 20 Titan (Lunine and Rizk)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.