Science Speaker Series - Featuring Darby Dyar, Prof. of Astronomy at Mount Holyoke College

“Looking for Life in Our Solar System: A Mars-Earth-Venus Comparison”

Since the dawn of civilization, humankind has wondered if human life on Earth is alone in the universe. Modern science refines this question to be about the search for water –where life began on Earth – on planets in our solar system and beyond. Recent NASA missions have focused on this issue through studies of subsurface ice on Mars, water cycles on the Earth, and the enigmatic clues of oceans and water left behind on Venus. This talk traces recent and emerging evidence about the presence of water on these three terrestrial planets.

Darby Dyar is the Kennedy-Schelkunoff Professor of Astronomy at Mount Holyoke College and Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. Dyar is a mineralogist and spectroscopist interested in a wide range of problems relating to the evolution of the solar system. She studies the redox state of iron and the abundance of hydrogen in solar system materials using Mössbauer, x-ray absorption, and FTIR spectroscopy. Dyar has pioneered the use of machine learning tools to interpret spectroscopic data. She is the Deputy Principal Investigator on the VERITAS mission to Venus and was a participating scientist on the Mars Science Laboratory science team. Her honors and awards include the G.K. Gilbert Award for outstanding contributions to planetary science from the Geological Society of America (GSA), the Hawley Medal from the Mineralogical Association of Canada, and the Eugene Shoemaker Distinguished Scientist Medal from NASA. She is a Fellow of: GSA, the Mineralogical Society of America, and the Geochemical Society. She earned her B.A. from Wellesley College and her Ph.D. in geochemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.