Are We Alone: Alien Planets
Join us for an evening with Eddie Schwieterman, NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow in UC Riverside’s Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center for the last lecture of the season in this fascinating series. Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. Some of these worlds reside at just the right distances from their host stars to support liquid water on their surfaces, and possibly even life. But do they? How can we find out, and when? The answers to these questions lie in the enormous - and subtle - impacts life may have on the atmospheres and surfaces of alien worlds. In this talk, we’ll explore the trailblazing efforts of astronomers and astrobiologists in search of the answer to that eternal question: are we alone?