Bullitt Lecture in Astronomy 2021 - Where is Everybody? The Search for Life in our Solar System and Beyond

 The Physics & Astronomy Department’s Bullitt Lecture is a free lecture aimed at the general public. Since 2001, the Physics & Astronomy Department’s Bullitt Lecture has presented a distinguished astrophysicist to a Louisville audience in the Gheens Science Hall and Rauch Planetarium. Gale Christianson, Hubble's biographer at Indiana State, Fred Espenak, an eclipse expert at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, stellar astrophysicists James Kaler of U. Illinois, C. R. O'Dell of Vanderbilt and Caty Pilachowski of Indiana U, cosmologists Fang Li Zhi of Arizona, J. Richard Gott of Princeton, Alan Dressler of the Carnegie Observatories and lunar experts Ferenc Pavlics of GM and the Apollo project and Phillip Abel of NASA have been Bullitt Lecturers. College and high school students, teachers, and many others from the community interested in the impact and excitement that astrophysics has generated have attended Bullitt Lectures in large numbers. The public and members of the University community are warmly invited!

The Lecture is endowed through a grant from the family of William Marshall Bullitt, the Solicitor General of the United States under President William Howard Taft. Here is a brief biography and description of his connection to the University of Louisville.

We also thank the Society for Woman in Physics and Astronomy (SWIPA) for their support.

Speaker: Nathan de Lee, Northern Kentucky University

Abstract:  Dr. Nathan De Lee will focus on the question of how we can search for life on other planets, starting this search in our own solar system and the key ingredients for life. From there we will look at different ways to detect planets around other stars. We have made amazing progress towards figuring out what our neighborhood looks like: two recent NASA satellite missions explore this neighborhood, Kepler and TESS.