As part of the听, Professor Stephen Mojzsis from the Department of Geological Sciences will discuss his new research in a free, public presentation titled 鈥淪hattered and Steaming Mars: A Recipe for Life?鈥� on Saturday, Dec. 3.
鈥淎ncient Mars was a battered place, pelted by comets and asteroids that melted and fractured its crust and covered large areas with intense heat and shattered rocks,鈥� Mojzsis said. 鈥淭his may sound pretty inhospitable, but impact-induced heating may have melted near-surface ice and made hot spring systems, forming an environment where life could take hold.鈥�
What: "Shattered and Steaming Mars: A Recipe for Life?"
When: Saturday, Dec. 3, 1 to 4 p.m.
Where: Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building, Butcher Auditorium, 3415 Colorado Avenue听
Mojzsis directs the Collaborative for Research in Origins (CRiO), which is funded by the John Templeton Foundation and the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (FfAME) origins program, and is a member of the CU Boulder Center for the Study of Origins, which is directed听by philosophy professor Carol Cleland.
His research seeks to understand the physical and chemical conditions on planets that lead to emergence of a biosphere. Mojzsis听is also a distinguished visiting professor at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest听and has held visiting academic positions in France at the Universit茅 Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and the Centre de Recherches P茅trographiques et G茅ochimiques (CRPG)听and in Japan at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Seating for the lecture is limited to the first 200 people, and doors will open at 12:30 p.m. Advance听registration is not required.
The CU on the Weekend lecture series features some of the university's听most accomplished and dynamic faculty.听
