Life Beyond Our Solar System

In 1584, the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno speculated that there are "innumerable globes like this one on which we live and grow."  It would be more than four centuries before the discovery of the first planets beyond our solar system lent support to Bruno's idea, but thousands of such exoplanets have now been identified. Indeed, our galaxy probably hosts billions of planetary systems. But how many of those globes are "like this one" and how can we determine whether life has taken hold there, too? In this talk, Dr. Hoehler will discuss the science of searching for life beyond our solar system, and will take us from what we know today to how we will seek evidence of inhabited worlds in the future.

Speaker: Tori Hoehler, NASA Ames