Office hours & recitations to enrolled members

All live sessions will be recorded and archived.

*Dates are tentative and therefore subject to re-scheduling
*Log-in info & details for all live-sessions will be e-mailed.

Office Hour: 
Your Professor answers questions and offers advice and insights.
Submit your questions: e-mail us at contact@crio.space to submit your question to be answered at our live meeting.
We can't promise that all questions will be answered due to the volume and limited time available, but we will do our best! In addition, we tend to compile most q & a from our members and post them for you to ponder.

Recitation: your Professor presents a topic relevant to the course

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Webinars for non-members

FREE webinars coming soon. Attend. They are fun.
E-mail us to keep-me-up-to-date with class events and free webinars: contact@crio.space

"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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