Noon Lecture: When Will We Find Life on Another Planet?

Overview

Guest lecturer Dr. Angelle Tanner will take you on a voyage across the solar system and to our stellar neighbors in search of life on other planets. She’ll get you caught up on efforts to search for life-signs on Mars, Europa, Titan and Enceladus, including how much we have advanced the census of nearby exoplanets. Also shared will be highlights of the telescopes and space missions which are being designed specifically to detect life on some of these planets.

BIO: Dr. Tanner’s primary research interests currently involve finding planets around active stars. She is also the project scientist for the recently awarded NASA Pioneers mission named Landolt. This 12-U cubesat will contain a set of calibrated laser beacons to be observed by ground-based telescope to produce precise stellar absolute flux calibrations. She is currently the project scientist on a yet to be submitted proposal to place a UV sensitive telescope on the moon for exoplanet atmosphere studies. For the past few years, she has been developing a database and web application called the Starchive which will be the most comprehensive stellar database assembled to date. The web application is designed to be used by students, teachers and researchers.