This is a talk I gave last summer to a small conference "The Search for Extraterrestrial Life - Europa&Enceladus" in Oxford, summer 2015. It's about the idea that when searching for life in our solar system, we could find something that's a "super positive" outcome of overwhelming value for us and future generations. And that if so we need to take great care we don't lose the opportunity or destroy it by introducing Earth life by mistake.
(or watch on youtube)
(note, that's not the final version of the recording, I uploaded the wrong one by mistake, but there's not much to fix, just things like some choices of words kind of thing very minor, I'll do the final version in a day or two)
You can watch the other talks in the conference here The Search for Extraterrestrial Life - Europa&Enceladus.
And this is another talk I prepared but didn't actually give at the conference, about issues to do with returning a sample to Earth. I explain why I think the simplest, safest and least cost and fastest way to do it is to return it to an orbit above Geostationary Orbit. I think the situation is much the same for any samples returned from Mars that have a chance for life in them, but for this talk, it's all about Europa and Enceladus.
I'm an inexperienced speaker - gave a previous talk on microtonal music in Turkey - and before that, last time would be talking about my doctoral topic to logicians and mathematicians in Oxford, back before Power Point, using large scrolling blackboards and chalk, or an overhead projector with slides written by hand on plastic with pens.
So anyway, it went okay, greatly enjoyed the occasion. And everyone wanted to do it again so it's probably going to be a recurring conference every couple of years or so.
But my own talk was muffed a bit. I was thrown by the technology, didn't realize that you could look at the slides in front of you in the lectern and spent the talk sideways to the audience looking at the slides.
So anyway been meaning to re-record it and here it is.
I'm going to be on David Livingston's "The Space Show" tonight Monday 7th, at 2-3.30 pm Pacific Time (10-11.30 UK time). So taking this opportunity also to give a shout out about it. That's actually why I did the two talks just now - been meaning to do them for ages - to have a bit of practice with clear speaking, before the show, because last two times I was on the space show, I realized I could do with speaking a bit more clearly (though it was okay).
So anyway I thought my regular readers would be interested, so here it is.
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