Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series: The Worlds Under Our Feet: Caves from Earth to Mars and Beyond

New exploration indicates that caves may be more common on rocky and icy worlds in our Solar System than we have thought in the past. Caves below the Earth show us a very different planet than the familiar one we experience on the surface.  Each dark cave system has its own micro-organisms and distinctive mineral and chemical properties.  So, we infer that caves on Mars and on some of the icy moons of the outer planets will also have characteristics quite different from their surfaces.  We will take a tour of the some of the most spectacular caves under the Earth and the unusual life-forms they harbor, and consider how the lessons they teach us can be applied to the exploration of the Solar System.

Speaker: Dr. Penelope Boston, Nasa Astrobiology Institute