“Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life” is the free online course starting by the UK Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with Coursera. This course in collaboration with Coursera will teach about the origin and evolution of life and the search for life beyond the Earth.

Astrobiology addresses undeniable questions of wide interest such as: How did life originate on the Earth? Is this an inevitable process and is life common across the Universe? Astrobiology is an interdisciplinary science that bridges fields as diverse as astrophysics, biology, geosciences and chemistry.

In this course students will learn about the life’s ability to live in extreme environments on the Earth and about different hypotheses for how it originated. Students will go through the some missions to search for life in our own Solar System and on planets orbiting distant stars.

Discussion will be made on the topics like the extreme environments on the Earth that helps in understanding the limits of life and how life has adapted to cope with extremes. Students will also learn about the possibility of intelligent alien life and some of the implications of its detection.

The course will provide a base in astrobiology and students get introduced to the concepts in a diversity of scientific fields.

Course Details

This course will start from January 2014 for the duration of 5 weeks. The study time should be 3-4 hours/week.

Course Syllabus

Week 1: What is life and what are the definitions of life? What do we know about the origin of life and what are the current hypotheses for how it originated on the Earth?
Week 2: What was the environment of early Earth like when life first emerged and what do we know about life on the earliest Earth? How did life evolve to cope with survival in extreme environments? What have been the major evolutionary transitions of life on the Earth?
Week 3: What are the prospects for life on other planetary bodies in our Solar System and how do we go about searching for it? What conditions are required for a planet to be habitable?
Week 4: How do we search for Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars and how would we detect life on them?
Week 5: What are the possibilities for intelligent life elsewhere? How would we deal with contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence and what would be the impact on society? Who would represent Earth?

Eligibility

No specific background is required for this course.

Suggested Readings

There are some books listed below on astrobiology which are suggested to read and that might be helpful in this course.
Astrobiology: A Brief Introduction by Kevin W. Plaxco and Michael Gross
Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology by W. Sullivan and J. Baross. Cambridge University Press
An Introduction to Astrobiology by D. A. Rothery, I. Gilmour and M.A. Sephton. Open University

Certificate

Students who successfully complete the class will receive a Statement of Accomplishment signed by the instructor.

About the Instructor

Charles Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh. He received his doctorate at the University of Oxford and was a National Research Council Associate at the NASA Ames Research Centre.