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Life on the Edge: A Journey of Discovery in Earth Science – Inaugural Lecture by Professor Kathy Campbell

Rocks and minerals are vital for unlocking the mysteries of life’s origin and for guiding the search for life on other worlds. ‘Extreme environments’, places too hot, cold, dry, salty, noxious or otherwise inhospitable to most things alive on our planet today are studied to help deepen understanding of where we came from and whether we are alone in the Universe. This talk explores life’s limits and its record in the rocks. It will also delve into one of the most exciting aspects of being a scientist, the art and wonder of scientific discovery, based on my own exploration of extreme environments on land and in the sea.

Space Travel: the next step?

To go or not to go; that is the question. Me, I vote yes, but since we cannot go right now, what should we do right now?

What do we know? Recent planetary exploration brings a flurry of results:

The last few months have been remarkable for planetary exploration. We have found a planet about twice the size of earth in the habitable zone of a star about the same size as our sun, and we have had space vehicles gather information of Ceres and Pluto, neither of which were significantly better than blobs in our best telescopes. Finally, there was a landing on a comet. From these, we have gathered a lot of data, but it is interesting to reflect on what extra we know.

Oldest Life on Earth

This is why I came so far. To see some of the oldest rocks on Earth, preserved within an extremely ancient remnant of a continental “core”, or craton in geological parlance, revealing the rocks of my field trip to be as old as 3.48 billion – that’s 3,480,000,000 – years before present. Cratons are the formative kernels, or foundational building blocks of the continents, whispering their stories about the early evolution of our planet to those who are listening. What is extra special about the rocks of the east Pilbara craton is that they contain sedimentary sequences formed in the lulls between voluminous volcanic eruptions which archive the earliest signs of life found so far on Earth. The shocker is that life was already diverse and surprisingly abundant by this time, so very long ago, hinting at a much earlier but now obscured history. So there aren’t really very many other places on Earth where one can peer into “Deep Time” to get a picture of how and where life was taking took hold, let alone to see what it looked like.

30th of June: Observing Asteroid Day!

30th of June was chosen to mark the anniversary of the 1908 Siberian Tunguska event. On June 30, 1908, an explosion over Siberia flattened trees and made a loud noise. But no crater was ever found. Scientists now believe it was a small comet or asteroid. Many events like these happened in the past. Closer to our […]

Eric Becklin tells about SOFIA

In 2013, I had the great opportunity to interview the Chief Science Advisor of SOFIA, Erick Becklin whilst the flying telescope was here in New Zealand for its first southern deployment.

We hold the dream that SOFIA will one day be accessible to school teachers from New Zealand, who could become ambassadors of SOFIA. In fact, the reason for this interview was to bring SOFIA to the classrooms and to a wider audience from around New Zealand.

Now SOFIA is back in New Zealand and very soon there will be more stories about this wonderful flying telescope. Watch this space and until then, learn about SOFIA and its discoveries from this interview.

No Life Under Ice at Europa?

There has been much speculation that there may be life in oceans of water under the ice layer of the Jovian satellites, particularly for Europa. In my theory, outlined in my ebook Planetary Formation and Biogenesis, there will be no such life.