[Baps] MIT Tuesday September 9

[Prof. Richard Binzel]

MIT Astrophysics Colloquium


The Search for 100 Earths
 
Debra Fischer, Yale


Tuesday, September 9 @ 4:00pm
refreshments @ 3:45pm

Marlar Lounge (37-252)


Abstract: 

The search for exoplanets is motivated by the question of whether life exists elsewhere. This drives our interest in the detection of planets that are similar to our own world: rocky planets with the potential for liquid surface water and plate tectonics; worlds that might harbor life that we can recognize. Importantly, we will need to discover not just a few, but hundreds of these worlds to eventually gain a statistical understanding of whether life is rare, common, or ubiquitous and ground-based telescopes offer an ideal platform for carrying out decade-long surveys. It is critical for follow-up studies (imaging, atmospheric studies) that these planets orbit nearby stars. In this talk, I will discuss how we plan to take what we've learned and push on to the next frontier: our plans for a next generation spectrograph, EXPRES, to carry out a search 100 Earths with the Discovery Channel Telescope. 

Sponsored by the Astrophysics Division of the MIT Department of Physics 
and the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research

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