Astrobiology, the Search of Life Around the Universe and the Understanding of Life on Earth
Interview With Dr. Alfonso Dávila for Atenea Americana
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Dr. Alfonso Davila during one of his many field trips
Our planet is changing in a pace that we can’t control, and our life will be affected in ways that we can not fully understand. As our knowledge of life, other planets, and even earth grow while we keep moving forward with our scientific achievements and space exploration, we find that we still have a lot to learn.
Humankind in its search for knowledge keeps studying earth and other planets. With this search, we come closer to fill the holes of our knowledge and the understanding the fragility of life and its origins. This research may give us a clue of how to preserve life in earth and how to adapt to change to survive under other environments. Understanding the changes in the universe and other planets, help us to preserve and understand ours.
Today we have a planetary scientist from NASA who specializes in a relatively new field. He is and astrobiologist, who is trying to understand life in all its forms, the creation and evolution of it in the earth and all around the universe thorough research and observation.
The process of landing curiosity on Mars, to study and understand what happened to mars and find out about the possibly of life in it.
Dr. Alfonso Davila is a research scientist at the SETI Institute and the NASA Ames Research Center in California. He has substantial experience in Earth and Planetary sciences. In Spain studied marine sciences and was trained in marine biology, chemistry, geology, and physics, with a later focus in marine geology and physics for his Masters degree. His Ph.D. from Germany was in bio-geophysics and the interactions between the Earth’s magnetic field and biological systems. His Post-Doc at NASA Ames in California brought him to work on the habitability of Mars through the study of Mars Analog Environments on Earth, giving him even more understanding and experience in fields of geology and biology. Dr. Dávila has been a guest speaker in international conferences and a guest lecturer in universities and research institutes around the world and has published more than 50 scientific papers and book chapters in these fields.
Dr. Davila exploring one of the few extreme environments on earth that will bring us closer to the understanding of the environments outside our planet
It is an honor to have him on the show, and will be back for another of this shows in Spanish soon.
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