News Release

UCLA Center for Astrobiology awarded $5 million

Grant and Award Announcement

University of California - Los Angeles

UCLA's Center for Astrobiology (CAB) has been awarded $5 million of additional research support over five years by NASA for its project "From Stars to Genes: An Integrated Study of the Prospects for Life in the Cosmos."

UCLA, a founding member of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, will use the funds to focus on four themes: extrasolar planetary systems, habitability of planets and their satellites, Earth's early environment and life, and evolution of biological complexity, said Edward D. Young, director of UCLA's Center for Astrobiology, professor of Earth and space sciences, and a member of UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.

"Over the next five years," Young said, "we will address such questions as: How are planets formed? Are there habitable planetary bodies outside our solar system? When and how did life appear on Earth and, possibly, Mars? How typical is our solar system? (UCLA scientists are beginning to answer this question by studying both extrasolar planetary systems and the solar system itself.) What are the biological innovations that allow life to climb to complexity on planetary timescales?"

NASA selected UCLA in 1998 as one of 12 teams to join the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI), a national and international research consortium that studies the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life on Earth and in the universe.

More than 50 UCLA faculty members and researchers participate in the Center for Astrobiology, with expertise in fields including astronomy, geology, geobiology, geophysics, geochemistry, paleontology, planetary science, microbiology and molecular biology, as well as astrobiology. The scientists are members of UCLA's departments of atmospheric sciences; chemistry and biochemistry; Earth and space sciences; mathematics; microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics; molecular, cell and developmental biology; organismic biology, ecology and evolution; and physics and astronomy; and of the Molecular Biology Institute.

Accomplishments of UCLA's faculty members range from detecting asteroids and comets around another star to identifying the earliest evidence for life on Earth. Some members of the CAB team have been at the forefront of technological advances in measuring isotope ratios at microscopic scales in natural materials, capabilities that are central to many of the program's studies, Young said. Others are playing significant roles in new astronomy missions, or are leaders in the fields of microbiology and paleontology.

"The most successful method for detecting planets beyond our solar system has been to measure the wobbles exerted by planets on their stars," Young said. "This method, however, is biased towards detecting giant planets in close proximity to the star. Such planetary systems with giant planets much closer to their stars than Jupiter is to our sun are unlikely to harbor life. Members of the UCLA team are developing and applying methods more suitable for detecting planetary systems that more closely resemble the solar system. The underlying assumption is that these systems are more likely to have Earth-like planets.

"Even where planets cannot be detected, our group proposes to search for indirect evidence for planet formation. Rock and ice debris around some stars may signify the existence of comets and asteroids, the precursors to, or vestiges of, rocky planets that could resemble Earth. We will conduct this research with the finest tools, including the Keck observatories and new platforms for observations from space and in the stratosphere that permit imaging with infrared wavelengths with minimal interference, as well as various radio telescope facilities.

"While hunting for extrasolar planetary systems and comparing them to our solar system is necessary for gauging the prospects for life elsewhere, it is not sufficient," Young added. "It is also necessary to define those objects that are habitable. Our team is addressing this issue by studying the factors that might control the habitability of the icy moons of Jupiter, the climate of Mars, potential links between the dynamics of rocky planets and their long-term habitability, the influence of orbital dynamics on the prospects for Earth-like planets in extrasolar planetary systems, and the role that asteroid and comet impacts play in survival and evolution of life.

"Our understanding of the Earth's earliest life, and of the environment that nurtured early life on Earth, is poor. Our team will conduct sophisticated isotopic analyses of Earth's oldest materials, including zircon crystals that are more than 4 billion years old and 3.9- to 2.5-billion-year-old sulfur minerals, to determine the ages of the Earth's atmosphere and hydrosphere, and relate these ages to the earliest signs of life. The results from these studies will provide not only new information about ancient life on Earth, but also a firm basis for life-detection on other bodies in our solar system."

Other CAB scientists are studying meteorites and the story these ancient rocks have to tell about the origin of our solar system. UCLA cosmochemists and astronomers are working together to discover the ways in which water might be incorporated into Earth-like planets.

The UCLA Center for Astrobiology was established in 1998, and was headed by Bruce Runnegar, who now directs NASA's Astrobiology Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center, while on leave from UCLA for the next five years. CAB will also offer public lectures and other public programs. UC Berkeley was among the other institutions selected.

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Online resources:
NASA Astrobiology Institute: nai.arc.nasa.gov/
UCLA Center for Astrobiology: www.astrobiology.ucla.edu/


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