Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute Extremophiles and Exoplanets

If you missed our last Zoom event on
Tuesday, May 11 at 5:30
here is the link to the recording:
PARI EVENT

In the last decade, humans have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars.  The characteristics of these planets range from potentially Earth-like to wildly inhospitable to life as we know it.  Most fall somewhere in between and require us to look at the way life on Earth has adapted to extreme environments and conditions to predict what could live in these strange places. We’ll look at how we discover exoplanets and determine what they are like.  We’ll examine different extremophiles that live on Earth, and, imagine how these unique organisms could potentially make new worlds more friendly to humans.

Our presenter was Timothy DeLisle and is PARI’s Director of Software Engineering.  He has been part of the leadership for PARI’s camp programs for eight years and sees the outreach, education, and experiences PARI offers as the true primary role of his job.  He has served as an Astrophysics instructor for the Duke University’s summer camps.  He has tutored Computer Science at Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  He has been writing curriculum for STEM education since 1999.  His focus in software development is creating vibrant, dynamic, intuitive user interfaces for complex instruments, and data visualization that helps to highlight the story a researcher seeks to tell with their data.