021: Natalie Grefenstette
What are the best strategies for finding life in space?
Astrobiology is a paradoxically established and yet still burgeoning field that is reconsidering the fundamental boundaries of what we mean by "life," while simultaneously searching for that life beyond Earth. Past guests have outlined how difficult the search for life is; they've contributed new detection methods and measures, they've proposed new tools, and they're working to establish new standards of evidence in support of such a discovery.
This week we ask SFI post-doctoral fellow, Natalie Grefenstette, how we can best equip ourselves to recognize life in space, given how little we know about life, at all. Natalie is working on the Agnostic Biosignature Project, a multi-institutional endeavor funded by NASA.
Learn more about everything referenced in this episode by clicking the links below:
Natalie's homepage
Co-Ordination: On Time Between Worlds - An InterPlanetary Panel discussion on Complex Time
Chris Kempes's Alien Crash Site Interview on life detection
"Towards a more universal life detection strategy" as submitted to the Planetary and Astrobiology Decadal Survey
Ted Chiang's "The Story of Your Life"