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A Pathway to the Confirmation and Characterisation of Habitable Alien Worlds

We are delighted to welcome our own Dr Heather Cegla as the next speaker in the Centre for Exoplanets and Habitability seminar series. Dr Cegla will be giving a talk titled 'A pathway to the confirmation and characterisation of habitable alien worlds'.

Abstract:
Are we alone in the Universe? Since the confirmation of the first planets outside our solar system in the 1990s, we have made tremendous progress towards answering this question. Yet, the confirmation of a true Earth-analogue still evades us. On top of this, if we are truly to understand the origins of life in the cosmos, we must also create a complete picture of planetary formation, evolution, and habitability. However, each of these aspects necessitates a detailed knowledge of Sun-like stars. This is because we study exoplanets indirectly by analysing their much more luminous host stars. For example, most planet confirmation relies on the Doppler wobble of the host star, induced by the presence of the planet. Moreover, we can learn about a planet's dynamical history from mapping its projected orbit as it transits its host star. Hence, if there are inhomogeneities on the stellar surface, they can impact planetary interpretations and even completely swamp the signals from rocky worlds. In this talk, I will discuss how we confirm and characterise planets outside our solar system and how our knowledge of their host stars poses a fundamental hurdle we must overcome on the pathway to rocky, temperate worlds.


There’s No Place Like Home: Placing Earth in its Astronomical and Geological Contexts

It is our pleasure to welcome Dr Raphaëlle Haywood from the University of Exeter to the Centre for Exoplanets and Habitability seminar series. Dr Haywood will be giving a talk titled 'There’s No Place Like Home: Placing Earth in its Astronomical and Geological Contexts'.

Abstract:
Recent revolutionary discoveries in astronomy are showing that Earth is one of billions of planets, and that terrestrial, temperate planets are commonplace in our galaxy. Geological records indicate that Earth has been many different worlds over time, and life has shown extraordinary resilience through these planetary changes. If we could go to the stars and point our telescopes back at Earth, what would we see? How does life alter Earth's astronomical character? We will look at one of Earth's defining ecosystems: the Amazon rainforest, which is observable from cosmic distances. We will reflect on the impact of various human civilisations. Ultimately, we will draw on these astronomical and geological perspectives to demonstrate that humanity's flourishing is profoundly tied to maintaining this world, here, that we co-evolved with.


GRP Keynote Lecture: Didier Queloz

It was our pleasure to welcome Prof. Didier Queloz for our first annual Habitability GRP keynote lecture. Prof. Queloz shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics with Michel Mayor and James Peebles, for discovering the first exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star, 51 Pegasi b. We were treated to a fascinating overview of past, present and future efforts to find life on worlds outside the Solar System. Upcoming missions like JWST and PLATO will probe more effectively than ever before, edging us ever-closer to answering the age-old question: are we alone?


New Habitability GRP

We are delighted to announce that Habitability has been selected as one of Warwick's Global Research Priorities (GRPs), which play a crucial role in interdisciplinary research at the University. The GRPs respond to complex multi-faceted global problems that can only be tackled through collaborative research excellence. They unite academics from different disciplines to address some of humanity’s most urgent questions, and create fertile ground for new ideas to flourish and interdisciplinary research to grow - enabling us to improve the lives of people around the world.

The four key themes of the GRP are outlined here. There are a number of funding opportunities for relevant research projects - see here for further detail.


NGTS-4b: A sub-Neptune transiting in the desert

CEH member Richard West leads the fascinating discovery of an exoplanet that falls in the middle of what has been termed the 'Neptunian desert'. This refers to a region close-in to the parent star where previously no Neptune-sized exoplanets had been found. NGTS-4b has a mass 20 times that of the Earth and orbits its star (a 13th mag K dwarf) once every 1.34 days! What's more, it's the smallest planet discovered by a wide-field ground-based photometric survey to date - excellent work!

This study was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 486, Issue 4, July 2019, Pages 5094–5103

Open access link: arXiv

CEH members involved: Richard West (lead), Daniel Bayliss, James Jackman, George King, James McCormac, Peter Wheatley, David Armstrong, Paul Chote, Ben Cooke, Emma Foxell, Boris Gänsicke, Tom Louden & Don Pollacco


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