URI_Research_Magazine_2010-2011_Melissa-McCarthy

It is science designed to enhance understanding of the role carbon dioxide plays in climate change. It also aims to help answer one of the more tantalizing scientific questions of our time: Does life exist on other planets and, if so, how? A handful of scientists have explored subsurface life sporadically since the 1920s, but the team from URI was the first to make serious, new inroads in the field. Their work began in the late 1990s and was initially supported by the Ocean Drilling Program of the NSF. Then, in 2001, D’Hondt, Spivack and Smith were awarded a five-year, $3.9milliongrant fromtheNational AeronauticsandSpaceAdministration

(NASA) to continue studying this “extremophile” community. In doing so, the URI team became part of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, an international consortium of highly select scientists, who study the origin, evolution and future of life in the universe. D’Hondt said that knowing what it takes for life to survive on earth can help in the search for life on other planets. That’s one goal of the research. The other is to add to our body of knowledge about the universe and to learn more about the “limits to life.” At issue is a very basic question: “Where’s the line between life and non-life?” he said. The URI oceanographers collaborate closely with scientists from around the world, who specialize in a multitude of disciplines, D’Hondt said. They have published their findings in numerous scientific journals. The team’s interests go well beyond subsurface life. In 2008, Spivack and D’Hondt worked with Judith Swift of URI’s Coastal Institute to sponsor the Fall Honors Colloquium on “People and Planet – Global Environmental Change.” A series of lectures on topics such as carbon mitigation, the colloquium was accompanied by exhibits in nine libraries throughout Rhode Island showing how climate change might affect the state’s coastal communities and ecosystems. The goal, said D’Hondt, was to not only show the changes people have made to the environment, but also how they might, collectively, make choices to mitigate their impact.

Arthur Spivack and Steven D’Hondt

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Research & Innovation 2010-2011