Astrophysics
The region around a star where conditions allow liquid water to exist on a planet's surface.
What is the Goldilocks zone (or habitable zone)?
The belief that humans are the most important or central part of the universe.
What is anthropocentrism?
The purpose or job that a literary device serves in a poem—for example, the "function" of repetition might be to emphasize a key idea.
What is function in literature?
The molecule that contains the genetic instructions for all living organisms on Earth.
What is DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)?
A visual diagram that shows all possible outcomes of one or more events by using branches to represent different paths.
What is a tree diagram?
A planet that orbits a star outside our solar system.
What is an exoplanet?
This paradox asks: if extraterrestrial life is likely to exist, why haven't we found evidence of it yet?
What is Fermi's Paradox?
A poem by Ada Limón that is engraved on NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft, literally carrying human words toward another world.
What is "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa"?
Five properties that biologists use to define life, including organization, metabolism, growth, and reproduction.
What are the characteristics of life?
The rule stating that to find the probability of multiple events occurring in sequence, you multiply the individual probabilities together.
What is the multiplication rule?
The process by which stars generate energy by combining hydrogen atoms into helium in their cores.
What is stellar fusion?
This mathematical equation attempts to estimate the number of communicative civilizations in our galaxy by multiplying probabilities of different factors.
What is the Drake Equation?
A poem by Amanda Gorman about viewing Earth from space, which inspired learners in this unit to think about our planet from a cosmic perspective.
What is "Earthrise"?
The process by which organisms with advantageous traits are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing those traits to their offspring.
What is natural selection?
A variable in a system that slows or stops the system when restricted.
What is a bottleneck?
This space telescope, launched in 2021, can detect infrared light from distant galaxies and exoplanets, helping scientists search for signs of life.
What is the James Webb Space Telescope?
A logical reasoning method where you draw general conclusions from specific observations—like concluding "all life needs water" based on observing Earth's life.
What is inductive logic?
The literary device where human qualities or emotions are given to non-human things, like when a poem says "the stars are listening."
What is personification?
An evolutionary hypothesis suggesting that organisms must constantly adapt to changing environments just to stay competitive and survive...named after the Red Queen in "Alice in Wonderland."
What is the Red Queen Effect (or Red Queen Hypothesis)?
A type of analysis that tests how sensitive a model's results are to changes in its input variables...useful for checking which assumptions in the Drake Equation matter most.
What is sensitivity analysis?
The property of an atom that determines how strongly it attracts electrons in a chemical bond; this concept helps us understand why certain molecules essential to life form the way they do.
What is electronegativity?
The flaw in reasoning that occurs when someone assumes that because we haven't found extraterrestrial life yet, it definitely doesn't exist anywhere.
What is a logical fallacy (or argument from ignorance/absence of evidence)?
A reference to a person, event, or text outside of a work that adds layers of meaning; for example, referring to the Voyager Golden Record in a poem about communication with distant worlds.
What is an allusion?
An organism that thrives in extreme conditions (like high heat, extreme cold, or high salinity) and challenges our assumptions about where life can exist.
What is an extremophile?
A mathematical scale ranging from 0 to 1 (or 0% to 100%) that measures how likely an event is to occur, where 0 means impossible and 1 means certain.
What is a probability scale?