2017 Dan MacLennan Lecture:
Sara Seager, Professor of Physics and Planetary Sciences, MIT

Exoplanets and the Search for Habitable Worlds
Friday, October 20, 2017
7–9 p.m.

Thousands of exoplanets are known to orbit nearby stars with compelling evidence that all stars in our Milky Way Galaxy likely have planets. Beyond their discovery, a new era of “exoplanet characterization” is underway with an astonishing diversity of exoplanets driving the fields of planetary science and engineering to new frontiers. The push to find smaller and smaller planets down to Earth size is succeeding and motivating the next generation of space telescopes to have the capability to find and identify habitable worlds. The ultimate goal is to discover planets that may have suitable conditions for life or even signs of life by way of atmospheric biosignature gases.