WASI Monthly Members Meeting
Monthly members meetings are held at 7:00 PM Eastern time on the second Wednesday of the month at the Bear Branch Nature Center, 300 John Owings Rd. Westminster, MD and online via Zoom. There’s a demo or class at 7:00 PM, followed by the featured guest speaker presentation at 7:30 PM.
Lou Mayo is the featured speaker for our September 9th meeting. His talk is about a handful of fundamental questions that remain to be answered. The answers to these questions, besides generating more questions, have the power to change every element of society, our belief systems, and our sense of who we are. Among these sits the question “Are we alone?”. Is the Earth the only life sustaining planet in the universe? Is extraterrestrial life possible? Is it probable? Could it be intelligent? The information needed to answer these questions span the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, and, of course, astronomy. The answer to this ultimate of questions is terrifying, either way.
In this presentation, we will explore the current state of knowledge surrounding life on Earth and what it may tell us about physical conditions necessary for extraterrestrial life. We will survey the solar system for possible life sustaining environments and look further out at extrasolar planets and planetary systems.
Lou Mayo is a planetary scientist with over 40 years experience supporting NASA planetary research, space missions, and space science data centers. He was a member of both Voyager and Cassini IR Science Instrument teams for 12 years through the NASA Goddard Laboratory for Extraterrestrial Physics focusing on research in planetary atmospheres, led the operations for the National Space Science Data Coordinated Archive, Space Physics Data Facility, Planetary Data System (management node) and the Astrophysical Data Center through the Goddard Space Science Data Operations Office, and is currently Chief Scientist for GAMA-1 Technologies and professor of astronomy at Marymount University. Lou is also president of ARIES Scientific, a small not for profit dedicated to astronomy education. Through ARIES, he played key roles supporting the NASA HQ Heliophysics Division for the 2023 annular eclipse and 2024 solar eclipse, providing science content, national outreach, and media interviews.
Lou’s primary research interests have been in outer planetary atmospheres, focusing on understanding the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, developing radiative transfer models of aerosols and molecular species in Titan’s atmosphere.
Lou is also heavily involved in astronomy outreach and public communication and lectures on a wide spectrum of topics in astronomy internationally. For over a decade, he led NASA’s team to bring heliophysics mission science and discovery to the country, including both Venus Transits and the 2017 solar eclipse across America. For NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, over the last 20 years, he has spearheaded astronomy education programs for Girl Scouts, Amateur Astronomers, university professors, and K-12 educators. He was a columnist for Mercury Magazine and is a featured panelist on the YouTube show, Space Oddities which streams live every Tuesday at 3pm EDT.
Meeting ID: 879 7384 1396
Passcode: 965007
Previous Meetings
You can see videos of previous meetings on our Youtube channel here