20: Searching for Signs of Life in the Universe

<p>A Conversation with Astrobiologist Dr. Nathalie Cabrol.</p>

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<p>With more than 300 million exoplanets in the habitable zone of their stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and up to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe - to think we are alone or the only advanced intelligent civilization is pretty close to nonsense.</p>

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<p><a href="https://www.seti.org/our-scientists/nathalie-cabrol" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Nathalie Cabrol </a>is a French American Astrobiologist specializing in planetary science. Cabrol studies ancient lakes on Mars, and undertakes high-altitude scientific expeditions in the Central Andes of Chile as the principal investigator of the  <a href="https://highlakes.seti.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&quot;High Lakes Project&quot;</a>  funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute. There, with her team, she documents life&#39;s adaptation to extreme environments, the effect of rapid climate change on lake ecosystems and habitats, its <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobiology" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">geobiological </a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobiology" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">signatures, and relevance to </a><a href="https://www.seti.org/carl-sagan-center" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">planetary exploration. Cabrol was appointed in 2015 to head the SETI Institute&#39;s Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe.</a></p>