Astrobiology Future Webinars – Next Steps

As we are rapidly approaching the end of the end of this stage of the Astrobiology Strategy planning, we would like to thank everyone that has participated as a presenter or author, commented on a white paper or at a webinar, or even just listened in to one of the presentations.

If you have not yet had the opportunity to listen to a particular webinar or comment on a particular white paper, they are all available on the website astrobiologyfuture.org. However, please visit the website soon, as we will be closing the papers to comments on Friday, February 14th.

The next stage – the integration of all of the white paper topics to a single document – will start soon, but in the meantime, there is a new way to contribute that will help with the integration: an editable spider diagram. Many will remember the spider diagram that came out of the original Wallops workshop and that was presented by Eric Smith in the kickoff: a diagram of all the white paper topics, connected by arrows to indicate links between topics. We have created an editable form of the spider diagram, which includes all of the topics that have been presented, to which arrows can be added and moved to indicate where you think the links are strongest.

In addition we have also created a spreadsheet with a table of all of the topics – this can be used along with the spider diagram to quantify the links between the topics, or as a stand-alone if it is preferred. We anticipate using the numbers from the spreadsheet for statistical analyses to understand how the community sees the interconnectedness of these topics, and will only be looking at the numbers and relationships indicated on the spreadsheet, so feel free to use the spider diagram in anyway you would like to group the topics.

We are going to ask all of the groups who worked on the white papers to come up with their own version of the spider diagram; anyone else in the community who would like to work on their own as well, please contact Lindsay [email protected] and include your gmail address, or an email address that can be used to access Google Docs. If you would prefer to use the Microsoft office version of these files instead also let Lindsay know in the email, but note that you will have to send the spreadsheet back on your own.

Thanks again for all of your contributions and input!

For more information on the Astrobiology Roadmap, click here.