Ocean Worlds in the Outer Solar System @SVAstronomyLectures

Uploaded April 2019 | Updated September 2026, 13 hours ago

Apr. 10, 2019
Dr. Kevin Hand of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory asks where the best place is to find life beyond Earth. He concludes it may be that the small, ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn harbor some of the most habitable real estate in our Solar System. Life loves liquid water and these moons have lots of it! Dr. Hand explains the science behind our understanding of these worlds, with a special focus on Jupiter’s intriguing moon Europa, which is a top priority for future NASA missions.

The Ultimate Fate of the Solar System (and the Music of the Spheres)

The Sun is Not Always Happy: Space Weather and the Question of Human Survivability

A Sharper Image: Seeing Colliding Galaxies with Adaptive Optics

First Update from the James Webb Space Telescope

Multiple Universes and Cosmic Inflation: The Quest to Understand Our Universe (and Find Others)

Postcards from Mars: The Latest from the International Armada of Robot Explorers

Do Humans Have What it Takes to Thrive in the Universe

Will the 21st Century be the Time we Discover Life Beyond Earth

How Galaxies Were Cooked From the Primordial Soup

$Images of the Infant Universe Nov. 12, 2014 Dr. Lloyd Knox (University of California, Davis) Professor Knox leads the U.S. team determining the basic characteristics of the cosmos from the data recently acquired by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite. He shows the detailed images of the sky obtained by Planck, pictures made from light that has been traveling our way for nearly 14 billion years, since the universe was only a few hundred thousand years old. He further explains how such images provide us with our best means of studying events mere fractions of a second after the Big Bang.$