Tuesday, Jan 22 - Back Room
The Empiricist League presents: It Came From Outer Space

Tuesday, Jan 22
7:00 pm in the Back Room

$5 / 21+

Exoplanets! Martian landers! Little green men! The Empiricist League’s fourth gathering will take place on Tuesday, January 22nd at 7:15pm at Public Assembly (70 N. 6th St., in Williamsburg, Brooklyn). Please RSVP at Facebook.

Sifting the Stars with NASA’s Kepler Mission
Lucianne Walkowicz is the Henry Norris Russell Fellow in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton and a TED Senior Fellow. She studies magnetic activity in the atmospheres of cool stars and stellar effects on planetary habitability using data from NASA’s Kepler Mission. Dr. Walkowicz will speak to the Empiricist League about NASA’s search for life beyond our solar system, and how stars affect a planet’s ability to have life on it.

Mission to Mars: Curiosity and the Future of Mars Exploration
Andrew Kessler is the author of Martian Summer, a non-fiction account of his time spent working on the Phoenix Mars mission. It’s about winning the nerd lottery–getting the most exclusive ticket to work inside mission control for a NASA mission to Mars. His work has also appeared in The New York Times and on The Discovery Channel. He holds a degree in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley. Mr. Kessler will speak to the Empiricist League about how NASA’s Curiosity rover seeks out signs of life on the red planet.

Signs of Life: Giant Space Telescopes and the Search for Other Earth-like Planets
Lee Billings is a science journalist who has written for Nature, New Scientist, Popular Mechanics, and Seed. His essay “Incredible Journey,” about the state of the art of interstellar exploration, was recently reprinted in Scientific American’s anthology The Best Science Writing Online 2012. He is also the author of the upcoming book “Five Billion Years of Solitude”, about the search for other Earth-like planets. Mr. Billings will speak to the Empiricist League about the methodologies that astronomers and planetary scientists use to someday find extraterrestrial, extrasolar life.