SCAS-Sonoma County Asronomical Society General Meeting.

Comets and Habitability
with Kamal S. Prasad, Sonoma State University

Occasionally people have looked up into the night sky and seen strange, glowing objects trailing luminous tails behind them as they move slowly among the stars. Sometimes they have terrified people with their mysterious comings and goings, but always brought some sense of awe and wonder.

... Ever thought that comets may have had something to do with life arising on earth?
Our October 12 speaker has, and he is coming to share his thoughts and the subject with us. Come meet Kamal Prasad of Sonoma State University and hear what he has to say about comets!

You may have heard the expression, "follow the money" when trying to sleuth out influences on...well a lot of things that affect the outcome of all sorts of things. When we look for where life might exist, we might similarly say, "follow the water."

It seems that life as we can conceive of it depends on a planet having liquid water (the "Goldilocks zone"). Or as last month's speaker Chris McKay pointed out, at least some sort of fluid for alien life. Well what distinguishes our planet? Of course, it has a lot of water, and therefore a lot of life! So if life depends on water, where did it all come from?

Some people believe that at least some water on our planet came from those "dirty snowballs" flying around our solar system, hitting our earth and releasing their water and maybe some other stuff that life depends upon to arise and survive.

Kamal S. Prasad got his undergraduate degree in Physics from University of California, Santa Cruz with minors in Astronomy and Education. He has taught high school physical science and written a science picture book about gravity. He works at the NASA Education and Public Outreach group at Sonoma State University. Outside of work, he is an environmental and animal rights activist.

So be sure and come to the next meeting while we discuss the wonder of comets, and meet Mr. Prasad, one of SSU's most recent denizens of their very successful and worthwhile public outreach program. As usual, Proctor Terrace School, Wednesday October 12th at 7:30 p.m.