Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer
Title: Travelers in the Night 669 & 670: Seeds (356) & Laser Surfing (364)
Organization: Travelers in The Night
Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus
Description: Today’s two stroy:
- When a fleet of interstellar spaceships leaves our solar system for a planet circling a nearby star the most important of all of the riches that human explorers will carry with them will be libraries of our planet’s DNA and the seeds of plants. They are the connection between past life, the inorganic world, and future life.
- When we find a planet which appears to have the chemical signs of living organisms in its atmosphere, the desire to take a close up look at it will be hard to contain. Laser propelled ultra light space probes could be sent to explore nearby worlds. The cost of investigating our planetary life hosting neighbors is likely to be less than what the US is planning to spend upgrading its nuclear weapons.
Bio: Dr. Al Grauer is currently an observing member of the Catalina Sky Survey Team at the University of Arizona. This group has discovered nearly half of the Earth approaching objects known to exist. He received a PhD in Physics in 1971 and has been an observational Astronomer for 43 years. He retired as a University Professor after 39 years of interacting with students. He has conducted research projects using telescopes in Arizona, Chile, Australia, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Georgia with funding from NSF and NASA.
He is noted as Co-discoverer of comet P/2010 TO20 Linear-Grauer, Discoverer of comet C/2009 U5 Grauer and has asteroid 18871 Grauer named for him.
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365 Days of Astronomy
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