Speakers Include Early NASA Astrobiology Investigators

World-renowned scientists will address past, present, and future activities in the search for signs of life in the universe at a NASA symposium on Thursday, Oct. 14, from 0800 - 1700 EDT. The event will take place at the Lockheed Martin Global Vision Center in Crystal City, VA.

Scientists from NASA and around the world are celebrating a half century of astrobiology research. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe. George Washington University in Washington consults with NASA in this arena and helped organize the speakers for the symposium.

Speakers include former NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin; James E. Lovelock of the University of Oxford; and Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Lovelock and Margulis are early NASA astrobiology investigators and co-developers of the Gaia theory, which proposes that Earth and all of its life forms function as a single interconnected system. Other notable speakers are Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.; Nobel laureate Baruch Blumberg; and planetary habitability researcher Victoria Meadows of the University of Washington in Seattle.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_50th.html