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Uffe Gråe Jørgensen, Professor in Astrophysics at the Niels Bohr Institute
There are around 10 billion Earth-like planets in our own Milky Way Galaxy (and 100 billion other galaxies in the visible universe). These are planets of the same size and with the same temperature as the Earth. Is it really possibly that life evolved on only one of them? And if so, then why? And if not, then what are all the other ones doing? Within the next 5 years, new instruments and simulations that we will participate in developing, will make it possible to say if some of the many newly discovered exoplanets are inhabited by living organisms. Soon, humanity will start colonizing Mars and other planets, and later nearby exoplanets. Seemingly nobody else in the whole Galaxy ever did that. Is that really because we are the “galactic super-civilisation”, are we completely alone, or is the problem rather that we just do not understand what life is and where our own place in its evolution is?

Anders Priemé, Professor in Microbial Ecology at University of Copenhagen
Can we establish microbial life on Mars using manipulated bacteria from Earth, and thereby facilitate the coming human colonization of the planet? Can we use this knowledge to identify biological activity in the spectrum of the light from far away exoplanets? In experiments in our laboratory, we will follow how bacteria collected at extreme locations on Earth, such as Antarctica and the highest Andes, react to changing environment. Exhaust gas from the metabolism of bacteria has over geological timescales completely changed the Earth’s atmosphere from its original composition, and even cloud formation is affected by free-floating bacteria. By measuring the optical properties of the exhaust gas of different types of bacteria, we will be able to model how their metabolism will affect the atmosphere of planets around other stars. Thereby, we will be able to quantify how different kinds and levels of biological activity will affect the atmospheric spectrum that we can observe of exoplanets orbiting stars lightyears away.

The Copenhagen Bioscience Lectures is a series of lectures open for researchers and everyone interested in our subjects. Every four weeks, on Thursday evenings, you are invited for lectures on cross-disciplinary research, scientific tendencies, and other themes relating to the Novo Nordisk Foundation Research Centers and bioscience in general. The theme for the lecture on 8th of October is “Biology Beyond Earth: Adapting and Identifying Life in Extraterrestrial Environments”.

All of our lectures are free of charge for participants.

Our lectures are accessible through online streaming.Sign up to receive a link to participate online. At the day of the event, you will receive an open link through which you can access the online event. Upon entry, you might be asked to download an app or software.

To attend the lecture physically, please register online.We ask that you only sign up for physical attendance if you are confident that you will show up, as we are running with limited capacity. If you sign up and find yourself unable to make it, please cancel in advance to give your seat to someone else.

Deadline for registration: Wednesday 7 October 2020