The Kepler Space Telescope has found thousands of planets and planet candidates. Perhaps one of the most exciting discoveries is that smaller, rocky planets are more common than we thought. Our current understanding of what makes a planet habitable for life includes a planetary surface (something you can stand on) and the potential for liquid water. If a planet is too massive, it is likely … Continue reading A Tale of Two Worlds
Presented by Greg Kestin, Laura Jeanty, and Brian Clark Lecture Part 1 Lecture Part 2 Lecture Part 3 Continue reading The Biggest Mysteries of the Tiniest Things: Exploring the Frontiers of Particle Physics
Presented by Anjali Tripathi, Kirit Karkare, and Sukrit Ranjan Earth is one of the eight planets in our Solar System. Within the past 20 years, astronomers have discovered more than 700 planets in the Universe, which are orbiting stars that are not our Sun. Presently, the Earth remains the only place in the Universe that we know of to harbor life. In this talk, we … Continue reading I Can Show You the Worlds: The Science of Planetary Exploration
— For the first time, recent advances in technology and space exploration have made the prospect of detecting evidence for life outside of our Solar System a foreseeable possibility. The pursuit of this evidence and the desire to learn more about the origin of life on Earth have led to the development of a new field called astrobiology. Astrobiology melds multiple disciplines including astronomy, chemistry, biology, geology and planetary science to answer one of humankind’s oldest questions: Are we alone in the Universe? Next generation telescopes, through their ability to detect signatures of life as we know it, can help answer this question. Continue reading Are We Alone? – How astronomers hope to find life in the Universe
— Are there other planets like Earth out there? Could they be places that future generations could eventually live? Is our Solar System somehow special? Current research on exoplanets – planets orbiting stars other than our own – aims to answer these questions. We know of hundreds of exoplanets, but one particular class of planet has continued to elude us: a planet the same size as Earth, orbiting a star like our Sun, and with a surface temperature just right for liquid water. Such a planet could be habitable to life as we know it here on Earth. Continue reading How to find an Earth-like planet
–You may be surprised by how much we have learned about life on Earth by observing some of the most distant objects we find in the universe: supernovae. These are the brief, but brilliant, explosions that end the life of certain types of stars and can outshine the collected light from the hundreds of billions of living stars in their home galaxy. Incredibly, these explosions have governed the history of life on Earth and challenged and informed the most basic tenets of our understanding of the universe for millennia. Revolutions in astronomical technology are providing us with a whole new understanding of supernovae and the things that they influence — which, it turns out, is nearly everything in the universe! Continue reading A revolution led by dying stars