Stellar Society Lecture- Titan: Ingredients for Life by Sarah Hörst

Johns Hopkins University Planetary Scientist Sarah Hörst gives this year’s Stellar Society Lecture "Titan: Ingredients for Life" About the Talk: Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is unique in our solar system. Below Titan's thick organic haze layer, rivers of methane carve channels into an icy bedrock and flow into large hydrocarbon seas. Across the landscape, water ice mountains and extensive organic sand dune fields are simultaneously alien and reminiscent of Earth. Titan’s lake mottled surface and thick, organic rich atmosphere may be an ideal setting for life as we do not know it and there is certainly much yet to be learned about our own home from the study of Titan. About the Speaker: Sarah Hörst is an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Her primary research interest is atmospheric chemistry, particularly the complex organic chemistry occurring in the atmosphere or on the surface of bodies in the solar system. Previously, Dr. Hörst was a NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Colorado. She is a recipient of the Gerard P. Kuiper Memorial Award from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. She has a BS in Planetary Science and a BS in Literature from the California Institute of Technology. She earned her Ph.D. in planetary science from the University of Arizona. Her research page is here: http://www.sarahhorst.com/research.html

Lai'Anna D Martin

4/22/2016 10:50:00 PM