New Worlds, New Discoveries: A major leap in the search for life beyond our solar system

Speakers: Michael Gillon, Principal Investigator of the SPECULOOS and TRAPPIST exoplanet searches, Research Scientist at the STAR Institute of the University of Liege, Belgium & Julien de Wit, Postdoctoral Associate in Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT

In the last two decades, thousands of planets have been found beyond our solar system. Among them, a few dozen are potentially habitable, i.e. they could harbor surface conditions suitable for life. However, until now, we have only been able to speculate, as detecting life on these planets was totally out of reach, even with the largest existing - or planned - telescopes. But a new project called SPECULOOS is changing the game, by detecting terrestrial planets around nearby small stars that are well-suited for the detection of life with *upcoming* observatories. Join us to hear about the latest findings of TRAPPIST, the prototype of SPECULOOS-and the path forward to studying these worlds, and exploring them for signs of life within the next decade.

EVENT WEBSITE | LIVE WEBCAST