resources

archived live-webinars

"Looking around you with new eyes"

#1 "Pangea and you" (click here to watch on YouTube)
When all the continents were together - in Pangea - the world of plants and animals changed.
Reptiles appeared, which gave rise to dinosaurs and birds.
Seed plants emerged, and covered the land in dense forests.
When Pangea finally broke up into many continents 200 million years ago, there was a profound re-arrangement of life.
Every feature of the natural world around you, has a long history behind its form and function!"
"What is this history?" "How do the forms and functions of plants and animals living today, reflect events in the deep past?"
What was the nature of this change, and how does it still affect us, today?


#2 "
Know thy star, know thy planet" (click here to watch on YouTube)
Exoplanets and the stars they orbit are unimaginably far away. How can we *ever* understand what these alien worlds are made of, if we have little hope of seeing them directly and no hope at all of ever visiting them? Could any of them be like Earth? 
We will explore the latest techniques of how rocky planets around other stars can be understood better by looking at the compositions of the stars they orbit.
This kind of cutting edge work actually has a long history; we will discuss this history and consider how this growing knowledge puts our *own* Earth into a cosmic context!


#3 "Feathers and hair" (click here to watch on YouTube)
Life on Earth emerged in water.  The origin of life involves the origin of reproduction.  All reproduction requires a watery medium, yet how did life accommodate this strict requirement when it moved from the seas to the land? In this webinar, we will explore the idea that reproduction that began "in the pond" (i.e. in water, as with fish and amphibians) made the transition to land
when life found a way to take bring the pond with it.
Find out how this happened by joining us in the discussion!


#4 "Reproduction in the pond" (click here to watch on YouTube)
Life on Earth emerged in water.  The origin of life involves the origin of reproduction.  All reproduction requires a watery medium, yet how did life accommodate this strict requirement when it moved from the seas to the land? In this webinar, we will explore the idea that reproduction that began "in the pond" (i.e. in water, as with fish and amphibians) made the transition to land
when life found a way to take bring the pond with it.


#5 "Seeing in color" (click here to watch on YouTube)
Why do we see in color? How do we see in color? Is the way we see different from that of other mammals, and of other organisms that see in color? When did color vision evolve? How and why did mammals loose color vision? How and why did the primates gain this ability back?
We learned from evolutionary theory that once a trait is deleted from the genome, that it will not return.  Does that make sense if we have color vision?
Let's take a look (pun intended) at this interesting point as we explore
"Seeing in Color" in this CRiO webinar!

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coming up next:

"The Search for Life in the Universe"

#1 "Introducing Life in the universe"
Welcome to a new season of CRiO webinars! Now, we will move from the Earth to beyond the

stars and ask ourselves: "Could there be life elsewhere in the Solar System? In the Galaxy?"

In this introductory webinar, we will explore the question of What is Life? Would you be surprised to learn that there exists no generally accepted definition for life? 


#2 "Life and the scale of the cosmos"

One often hears the phrase: "We are star dust." But what does this mean? How do we know what stardust is, much less that we are "made" of it? Here we will discuss how the atoms in our bodies were created in events from the Big Bang to the explosive deaths of ancient stars. To better understand this concept means that we have to try to grasp scales and distances. Our place in the cosmos is challenging to understand; we will work together to try to grasp it.


#3 "Star and planet formation"

It is probable that most if not all life in the universe occurs on planets. Yet, how do planets form? What of the stars that planets orbit? What are the ingredients that go into making the planets, and how is this important for determining whether or not life could take hold? 


#4 "Early days of the Earth"

Our planet is the only one we know, for sure, has life on an in it. When did the Earth form? What early events in the history of the solar system affected our planet that modulated its later evolution? Were these events, such as from comet bombardments, Moon formation and the origin of the oceans, inextricably linked to the life-giving world that we have now? Are there any other planets in our Solar System that also shared these presumably life-giving properties?


#5 "A window into the Deepest Past"
When did physical and chemical events happen in the deep past? Only a few naturally occurring chemical elements that are radioactive, are actually useful for determining the ages of meteorites and other extraterrestrial rocks, and ancient Earth materials. How does this work? What are some other consequences to the Earth and Earth-like (terrestrial, rocky) from radioactivity and the heat it generates?


#6 "The falling sky"
Impact cratering is a geologic process. Every year, something like 20,000 tons of debris comes to Earth from space.  Most of this material arrives as interplanetary dust and small meteoroids, but sometimes something much larger strikes the surface. About once per month an object large enough to hit the ground as a rock strikes an area about the size of France.  In the early solar system, both the frequency and intensity of meteor bombardment was significantly higher. What effects did this early bombardment have on the planets? What did it mean for emergent life?


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