Thursday, May 15, 2008, 12:30 pm, Pratt Conference Room
Assembling the Puzzle: From Earths and super-Earths
Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger (CfA)
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After a decade rich in giant exoplanet detections, observation
techniques have now reached the ability to gain information on the
physical structure and chemical content of some of the detected planets
and also to find planets of less than 10 Earth masses - so called super
Earths. How can we detect and characterize them? What are they made of?
Can they be habitable? The detection and characterization of Earth-like
planets is approaching rapidly and dedicated space observatories are
already in operation (CoRoT) or in development phase (Kepler) or
planning (Darwin, TPF-I/C).
In my talk I will focus on the fascinating new results and models for Earth to super Earths and the potential that they could be habitable. |
