Speaker
Prof.
Sara Seager
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Description
Thousands of exoplanets are known to orbit nearby stars with the statistical inference that every star in our Milky Way Galaxy should have at least one planet. Beyond their discovery, a new era of “exoplanet characterization” is underway with an astonishing diversity of exoplanets driving the fields of planet formation and evolution, interior structure, atmospheric science, and orbital dynamics to new depths. The push to find smaller and smaller planets down to Earth size is succeeding and motivating the next generation of space telescopes to have the capability to find and identify planets that may have suitable conditions for life or even signs of life by way of atmospheric biosignature gases.
Primary author
Prof.
Sara Seager
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
