Lecture notes for ASTR 3800 Astrobiology at Valdosta State University. This course is designed using material from Fundamental Planetary Science, Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World and Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology, where it will include summaries of the course material and code implementation/exercises. The course is divided into three sections (Basic Planetary Science; Origins of Life; and Life on Habitable Worlds).
The JupyterBook can be found at saturnaxis.github.io/Astrobio
The following chapters are used from Fundamental Planetary Science by Lissauer & de Pater:
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Dynamics
- 3 Physics and Astrophysics
- 4 Solar Heating and Energy Transport
- 5 Planetary Atmospheres
- 16 Planets and Life
- 16.6 Planetary Requirements for Life
- 16.8 How Life Affects Planets
- 16.9 Origin of Life
- 16.10 Darwinian Evolution
The following chapters are used from Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World by Lunine:
- 4 Fusion, fission, sunlight and element formation
- 11 The Hadean Earth
- 14 The first greenhouse crisis: the faint young Sun
- 17 The oxygen revolution
- 19 Climate Change across the Phanerozoic
Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology has many authors, where the following contributions are used:
- 4 Planetary atmospheres and life (Catling and Kasting)
- 5 Does 'life' have a definition? (Cleland & Chyba)
- 6 Origin of life: the crucial issues (Shapiro)
- 10 Evolution: a defining feature of life (Baross)
- 11 Evolution of metabolism and early microbial communities (Leigh, Stahl, & Staley)
- 12 The earliest records of life on Earth (Buick)
- 13 The origin and diversification of eukaryotes (Sogin, Patterson, & McArthur)
- 14 Limits of carbon life on Earth and elsewhere (Baross, Huber, & Schrenk)
- 16 The evolution and diversification of life (Awramik & McNamara)
- 17 Mass extinctions (Ward)
- 18 Mars (Jakosky, Westall, & Brack)
- 19 Europa (Chyba & Phillips)
- 20 Titan (Lunine and Rizk)
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