Crosspost: An Astrobiologist’s Search for Life in Space—and Meaning on Earth

By Ramin Skibba for Wired

[Eds note: Free access is possible, and a subscription may be required.]

Photo: Ryan Lash/TED

WHEN AOMAWA SHIELDS temporarily left astronomy in the 1990s for a life in the theater, no one knew whether planets existed beyond our solar system. By the time she returned to academia 11 years later, hundreds of exoplanets had been discovered. Today, telescopes and detection methods have advanced so much that the discoveries number close to 6,000. 

Shields, now an astrobiologist at UC Irvine, studies these distant worlds using computer models to evaluate their climates and assess whether they might be friendly to alien life. During this second stint in academia, she completed her PhD at age 39 and afterward gave birth to her daughter. She has been named a 2015 TED Fellow, she’s the recipient of multiple grants and awards from NASA and the National Science Foundation, and she’s the founder and director of Rising Stargirls, a program encouraging girls of all colors to learn about the universe through theater, writing, and visual arts.

In her new book out today, Life on Other Planets, she discusses her scientific work, as well as her own experiences as one of the few Black women in physics and astronomy and as a classically trained actor who completed her master of fine arts degree at UCLA.

Read more at

https://www.wired.com/story/an-astrobiologists-search-for-life-in-space-and-meaning-on-earth/

Watch an interview with Good Morning America at

https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/culture/video/world-astronomer-astrobiologist-author-dr-aomawa-shields-100885906