Talk: Exoplanets - 27th August 2015

Date and Time: Thursday 27th August at 20:00

Venue: Charles Hunt Room, John Mackintosh Hall

Speaker: Tom Toughill

Topic: Exoplanets

Synopsis: 

For as long as we've understood what planets were, we have been obsessed with wondering what life would be like on them. Could we live on them? Could life develop differently on these vastly different landscapes? Could we visit them? In the past twenty years there has been an explosion in the number of exoplanets being discovered (over 1900 so far and rising fast). With over five different methods of detecting them it keeps researchers very busy. 

In this talk we will look at some of these methods and what kind of planets we are discovering. Is the Earth a "normal" planet? How many planets have water, seen as crucial for the development of life? What about planets that don't have a parent star? We will look at all of these questions and more.