The Terrestrial Worlds of Other Stars
The Terrestrial Worlds of Other Stars
A Conversation with Dr. David Charbonneau
(UTC)
Join us for an exciting conversation exploring the discovery of rocky worlds orbiting nearby stars—planets that share similarities in temperature and composition with Earth.
The big question is: Are these truly Earth-like orbs, or are they airless worlds inhospitable to life? Using the powerful NASA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are now getting their first sniffs of the conditions on some of these planets. In the not-too-distant future, powerful new observatories should definitively answer the grand question of whether or not we are alone in the Universe.
Speaker
David Charbonneau is the Fred Kavli Professor of Astrophysics at Harvard University. He enjoys working with students and postdoctoral fellows to develop novel methods and instruments for the detection and characterization of planets orbiting other stars, and studies how the life cycles of the parent stars affect the presence and properties of the atmospheres of any attendant worlds. Dr. Charbonneau has pioneered many of the methods that are now widely used to discover and study these worlds, including the first passage of an exoplanet in front of its star, the first detection of an exoplanet atmosphere, and the first estimate of the number of habitable worlds in the galaxy. He recently co-chaired the National Academies study, commissioned by Congress, that describes our national strategy for exoplanet research, including the search for life in the Universe. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 2024, he was awarded The Kavli Prize in Astrophysics along with Sara Seager for their ground-breaking work on the discovery and characterization of extra-solar planets and their atmospheres.
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