June 2007

June 1: Monthly Meeting

How to find Fingerprints of Earth-like Exoplanets

Lisa Kaltenegger

In a famous paper, Sagan analyzed a spectrum of the Earth taken by the Galileo probe, searching for signatures of life. They concluded that the large amount of oxygen and the simultaneous presence of methane traces are suggestive of biology. In this talk we discuss biomarkers and focus on what makes a habitable planet, using Earth as our example. What can we see? How can we detect those faint planets? What happens to a planets around different stars? How do we find them? How do we pick our targets? From the first bacteria to dinosaurs to take-out, what can we find? We live in an exciting time when the detection of life’s signatures on worlds orbiting other stars maybe achievable within a generation.

Lisa Kaltenegger got her MS from the Karl Franzens University in Austria on ground based search for extraterrestrial planets in 1999 and her ME from the University of Technology of Graz in Austria for work on biophysics in cancer research in 2001. For her PhD she worked on the design of the Darwin and Terrestrial Planet Finder mission as part of the design team at the European Space Agency (ESTEC). Darwin and TPF are missions that is designed to detect earthlike planets around others stars. She graduated in 2004 under the auspices of the president of Austria as honor for outstanding academic achievements in her career. She currently holds an SAO postdoctoral position at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Boston, working on characteristics of extrasolar terrestrial planets and biomarkers in its atmosphere as well as the search for those planets around other stars.