Physics Colloquium: A Future Full of Planets―Discovering and Characterizing Worlds Beyond Our Solar

Thursday, May 11, 2017

3:30 PM-4:30 PM

Patricia T. Boyd, PhD, NASA

A Future Full of Planets―Discovering and Characterizing Worlds Beyond Our Solar System

A Future Full of Planets―Discovering and Characterizing Worlds Beyond Our Solar System The rate of discovery of planets outside our solar system has recently burst from a trickle to a flood, transforming our understanding of our place in the Universe. Thanks to NASA's Kepler exoplanet-hunting space telescope and other missions, we now believe that our Milky Way galaxy is teeming with tens of billions of extrasolar planets. These exoplanets come in a remarkable variety of shapes and sizes, from smaller than Earth to larger than Jupiter, and include a small sample of Earth-size planets that orbit their stars at a distance where liquid water could exist on their surfaces. NASA’s upcoming Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will perform a 2-year all-sky survey to discover exoplanets orbiting bright nearby stars for further study. But the ultimate goal of imaging an Earth-size planet around another star, and developing a comprehensive understanding of its surface properties and atmospheric characteristics, remains elusive and challenging. To usher in the era of comparative planetology, astronomers look forward to the launch of the powerful infrared James Webb Space Telescope in 2018, while designing and developing the next generation of great observatories. This presentation will review our current state of knowledge of the diversity of exoplanetary systems and the technical challenges of direct imaging and atmospheric characterization. The process needed to take the next steps to directly image exoplanets and to search for water, ozone, oxygen and other potential markers of habitability will be presented. The present landscape of rapid discovery and technology development will be used as a springboard for envisioning our potential advancement in understanding exoplanets into the next decade.

Contact Information

Professor Michael Vogeley
vogeley@drexel.edu