Pondering Our Place in the Universe
When
Where
Dr. Michael Wong
NHFP Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow
Carnegie Institution for Science
Astrobiology seeks to answer the age-old questions “Are we alone?” and “Where did we come from?” To advance these queries, my research takes on a unique blend of planetary science, data science, and philosophy. This talk will cover four of my most exciting projects. First, I will explore how astrobiology, as a universal acceptor of all disciplines, epitomizes philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend’s views on epistemic pluralism. Second, I will show how we can look for in situ biosignatures by combining pyrolysis-GC-MS measurements of a wide variety of terrestrial and extraterrestrial carbonaceous materials with machine learning, achieving >90% accuracy in the differentiation between samples of abiotic origins vs. biotic specimens. Third, I will propose a new time-asymmetric law that states that the functional information of a system will increase over time when subjected to selection for function(s). And finally, I will introduce novel principles of “astrobioethics” that can serve to guide our future investigations of extraterrestrial environments.