"is it possible that humans could start to live on the moon? Such as start colonies there?"
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Seminar Detail
Impact Bombardments on Early Earth and Mars: Implications for Habitability
Presenter: Oleg Abramov (University of Colorado)
July 12, 2010 11:00 AM Pacific
Lunar rocks and impact melts, lunar and asteroidal meteorites, and an ancient martian meteorite record thermal metamorphic events with ages that group around and/or do not exceed 3.9 Gyr. That such a diverse suite of solar system materials share this feature is interpreted to be the result of a post-primary-accretion cataclysmic spike in the number of impacts commonly referred to as the late heavy bombardment (LHB). We report numerical models constructed to probe the degree of thermal metamorphism in the crust in the effort to recreate the effect of the LHB on the Earth and Mars; outputs were used to assess habitable volumes of crust for possible near-surface and subsurface primordial microbial biospheres. Our analysis shows that there is no plausible situation in which the habitable zone was fully sterilized on Earth and Mars, at least since the termination of primary accretion of the planets and the postulated impact origin of the Moon. Our results explain the root location of hyperthermophilic bacteria in the phylogenetic tree for 16S small-subunit ribosomal RNA, and bode well for the persistence of microbial biospheres even on planetary bodies strongly reworked by impacts. In fact, on Mars, the LHB may have been very beneficial for habitability by generating widespread hydrothermal activity, releasing water vapor into atmosphere, and likely temporarily changing global climate to a warmer and wetter state.
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Click here to view Online RecordingDecember 21, 2007
The Director’s Seminar series features talks from scientists who are invited by the NAI Director to present their research results to the community. A primary goal of the seminars is to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration across NAI teams and within the astrobiology community at large.
Team Overview Seminars describe the work of the fourteen NAI teams and NAI Central. They offer an opportunity to find out more about the science, E/PO and other activities being performed by the NAI teams and the NAI Central office.
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The University of Washington seminar series is hosted by the NAI Virtual Planetary Lab (VPL) team from the UW campus in Seattle.
