The CEH is pleased to announce the launch of a new, monthly seminar series: "Visions of Habitability".

The seminars will run monthly, on the second Tuesday of each month, at 12:00 in room PS0.17. They will involve a short research paper of approximately 20-30 minutes, followed by a dedicated discussion period. Speakers will be drawn primarily from members of the CEH, or suggested speakers from elsewhere at Warwick, but occasional invited speakers will also feature. All are welcome to attend, whether currently associated with the CEH or not.

The first seminar will take place on the 8th of March 2016. The speaker is Chloe Pugh from the Centre for Fusion, Space, and Astrophysics.

Talk title: Space Weather: Impact on Habitability

Abstract: The seemingly benign Sun fills the solar system with a continuous stream of charged-particle radiation, in the form of the solar wind and magnetic eruptive events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Fortunately the Earth’s magnetic field shields us from the damaging effects of this radiation. For planets like Mars, however, their weak magnetic field means that any atmosphere they may have had in the past would have been eroded away by space weather, rendering them uninhabitable. Many stars not dissimilar to the Sun have been observed to produce flares thousands of times more powerful than solar flares, which would have serious implications for any potentially habitable exoplanets that they host. This is something that is often not considered in the search for exoplanets in a habitable zone, and it has recently been reported that the host star of the most Earth-like exoplanet produces these so-called ‘superflares’.