X series of Majorana Lectures/1 - Josh Winn - The search for exoplanets

Friday 22 Jan 2021, 16:00 → 18:00 Europe/Rome

Josh Winn
The search for exoplanets

Department of Astrophysical Sciences,
Princeton University
https://scholar.princeton.edu/jwinn/home

1 Strange New Worlds

For centuries people wondered whether the stars in the sky harbor planets of their own. Astronomers began discovering such "exoplanets" in the 1990s and have identified thousands since then. Advances in technology have brought us to the threshold of finding planets similar to Earth, while also revealing bizarre new worlds unlike anything in our Solar System. I will review our current knowledge of the occurrence and orbital characteristics of planets around other stars -- highlighting the most remarkable and unexpected exoplanets -- and describe some implications for planet formation theory. I will also present the current results and prospects for future discoveries based on data from an ongoing NASA mission, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

The lecture will be transmitted on Zoom:

https://infn-it.zoom.us
meeting ID: 876 1422 9561

please connect some minutes before 4 p.m.

Strange new worlds