Friday, September 7th & 14th

3:00 PM

Main Dining Room

Is the existence of life on Earth a lucky fluke or an inevitable consequence of the laws of nature? This presentation, based on the one example of life we know about, will focus on the current scientific understanding of astrobiology. We will avoid speculation about other life forms and alien abductions. Robert Nichols is a retired environmental engineer and an astronomy enthusiast. He has been interested in the possibility of life on other planets since middle school, when he first learned that the sun is just an ordinary start and any star may have planets orbiting around it. He pursued this interest more rigorously after retirement by taking a total of four astronomy courses as a continuing education student at UVM over a three-year period. He has read widely in the astronomy field and has been an avid reader of Sky and Telescope and Astronomy magazines in the last 20 years.