What can Earth’s history teach us about planets orbiting other stars? If you could visit the early Earth, you would find it a vastly different, inhospitable, and alien place. Yet, it was in this environment that life on this planet began and evolved. What do we know about the ancient Earth and how can that guide our search for habitable planets orbiting other stars?

NASA, NSF, and the Smithsonian Institution hosted a panel last week in Washington, DC featuring leading science experts to discuss what is known about our ancient Earth and how that information can guide the search for habitable planets orbiting other stars. The event was recorded, and the archived video can be viewed here.

Panelists included Phoebe Cohen, Professor of Geosciences Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts; Shawn Domagal-Goldman, Research Space Scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt. Maryland; Christopher House, Professor of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania; Timothy Lyons, Professor of Biogeochemistry, UC Riverside, Riverside, California; and Dawn Sumner, Professor of Geology, UC Davis, Davis, California, and David Grinspoon, senior scientist, Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz. and former Blumberg NASA-Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Washington DC served as moderator.