TAPIR Seminar
Sara Seager received her B.Sc. in mathematics and physics from the University of Toronto in 1994. She earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University in 1999, where she investigated recombination in the early Universe before moving to the then brand-new field of exoplanets. Seager was a long-term member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, and a senior research staff member at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C., before joining the MIT faculty in 2007. Seager was awarded the American Astronomical Society's Helen B. Warner prize in 2007 for her work on exoplanet atmospheres.
The search for exoplanets includes the promise to eventually find and identify habitable worlds. The thousands of known exoplanets and planet candidates are so diverse in terms of their masses or sizes and orbits and host star type—including new classes of planets that are very common yet have no solar system counterparts. Even with the requirement that a planet's surface temperature must be compatible with liquid water (because all life on Earth requires liquid water) a new emerging view is that planets very different than Earth may have the right conditions for life. I will discuss how the broadened possibilities increase the future chances of discovering an inhabited world, including with the future James Webb Space Telescope.
NOTE Unusual Venue: Hameetman Auditorium