There are a ton of exceedingly odd collegiate classes floating around out there. Now Edinburgh University is joining the fine tradition of off-beat classes, and they’re doing it online and for free.

This course, called ”Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life,” will last five weeks, and is part of the university’s set of free online courses. It’s pretty cool, considering how prestigious the school itself is.

Among other things, the course will explore how to go about finding life on other Earth-like planets, as well of the implications of these possible discoveries and what the implications of contact may mean if (or when) it happens.

SETI astronomer Seth Shostak on the search for ET

The whole concept of Earth-like planets in orbit around other suns — planets that may have all the important conditions to harbor life as we know it — has skyrocketed with the amazing success of NASA’s Kepler space observatory, launched in 2009 to search for them. According to the Kepler website, 1,790 host stars with a total of 2,321 planet candidates have been detected by the telescope, with 74 planets confirmed.

Professor Charles Cockell, director of the UK Centre for Astrobiology, describes the course as a good introduction to the field of astrobiology, saying that it “It explores the origin and evolution of life on the Earth and its potential to exist elsewhere. Astrobiology addresses compelling questions of wide interest, such as: How did life originate on Earth? Is this an inevitable process and is life common across the universe?”

A December 2011 Sky News (UK) report about the first planet confirmed to orbit another sun’s habitable zone:

According to the Huffington Post, this course is a first:

Edinburgh is the first university in the U.K. to join the Coursera consortium, founded by Stanford University computer scientists, that offers free online undergraduate courses to students and adult learners around the world.

If you’re interested in taking part, don’t worry; the class doesn’t start until January 2013. Here’s a short outline of what will be covered:

Week 1: The definitions of life and how it originated on Earth.

Week 2: Early Earth environments when life first emerged and the various evolutionary transitions of life on Earth.

Week 3: The prospects for life elsewhere in our solar system and the required conditions for a planet to be habitable.

Week 4: How to search for Earth-like planets orbiting distant suns and how to detect possible life there.

Week 5: How earthlings would be impacted by the discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligence.

While the Edinburgh University out-of-this-world course will have no entry requirements or fees, students are expected to work hard to complete the study in order to receive a passing certificate.

If you’re interested in signing up for “Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life,” click HERE.

(via Huffington Post)

Filed under: Amateur Astronomy • ExoPlanets