[natphil] Natural Philosophers ---December meeting info!!

[Linda Wickland]

We have a great speaker lined up for our Dec. 13th meeting.  Doug first heard Mary Helen Armour’s presentation “The Search for Life in Our Solar System” at a Royal Astronomical Society of Canada meeting last March and found it to be absolutely excellent!!   He has arranged for her to do the same talk for us, so you won’t want to miss this opportunity to come out and hear what’s happening in the search for life outside our planet.

A great chance for those who haven’t made it out for a while to come and enjoy the evening.  Know a friend, relative, neighbour interested in astronomy??  Bring them along with you!!!  Let’s make it a full audience for a great speaker.

 Following is a brief bio of the speaker and the main basis of her presentation.

Hope to see you on the 13th!           (7:30 in room 408 of the Physics Building, U of T)
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Bio for Mary Helen Armour
Our guest speaker for the December 13th meeting is Mary Helen Armour, a professor at York University in the division of Natural Science.  She says that having been raised on Star Trek reruns and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos she developed an interest in astronomy and the possibilities of life on other planets.  She did her graduate work in astronomy at York, and now teaches mainly in the Natural Science program.  One of her courses that she teaches is “Life Beyond Earth” which looks in detail at the science and exploration for life beyond our own planet.

Her presentation explains that when searching for life it is very difficult to figure out what kind of evidence actually tells us life exists, so we look at what elements we know life here on Earth needs.  The talk will cover the basic requirements for life and where we might find them in our own solar system.