PLANETARY SCIENCES AND ASTROBIOLOGY

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ASTR 497, ESS 490
Planetary Sciences and Astrobiology

Readings:

Weeks 1-2:

LIFE ON EARTH AND ORIGINS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
1) What Is Astrobiology?: A simple introduction from
D. Catling, Chap. 1, (2013) from a book Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction
 
Lissauer & de Pater (2013), Ch. 16,  Fundamental Planetary Science

2) Articles discussing the question of 'What is Life':
(a) L. Villarreal (2004) Are Viruses Alive? Scientific American.
An article discussing viruses and the question of what we mean by life.
(b) Cleland and Chyba (2002) "Defining Life"
(this article is similar to what's in the Sullivan and Baross book chapter, but shorter)

Weeks 2-3:

3) Possible reading for weeks 2-3 of the course:
Lissauer & de Pater (2013), Ch. 15,  Fundamental Planetary Science
Eales (2009) Ch. 8 The Origin of Planetary Systems, in Planets and Planetary Systems, Wiley.

PLANETARY DIFFERENTATION AND INTERIORS

Eales (2009) Ch 4: The Interior of Planets,
in Planets and Planetary Systems, Wiley*.

Note: The Eales (2009) chapter on planetary atmospheres (Ch. 5) is rather limited. My lecture notes are much better.

Weeks 5-6:

PLANETARY ATMOSPHERES AND SURFACES

Eales (2009) Ch 3: The surfaces of planets, in Planets and Planetary Systems, Wiley*.
Lissauer & de Pater (2013), Ch. 6,  Sec. 9.4, Fundamental Planetary Science

Week 7-9:

OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM
Prockter and Pappalardo (2014) Europa. In Encyclopedia of the Solar System 3rd Edition.

Basic Solar System astrobiology (early Venus, Mars, Ceres, Galilean moons, Titan, Enceladus, Triton, Pluto) is summarized in the following:
D. C. Catling (2013) Chapter 6 from Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford University Press.

*Chapters are very short, so you can read them in <1 hour. For copyright reasons, I cannot put PDF of all chapters of Eale or Lissauer online. Sorry about that.
I have more latitude with my own book.