SETI Live: Baby Moons in the Making? - Livestream

On this episode of SETI Live, host Moiya McTier welcomes two leading researchers-Gabriele Cugno (University of Zürich) & Sierra L. Grant (Carnegie Institution for Science)-to dive into an extraordinary discovery by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a carbon-rich, moon-forming disk around the distant exoplanetary object CT Cha b, some 625 light-years away.

What exactly is a “moon-forming disk”? Why is this discovery a game-changer for our understanding of how moons - and ultimately habitable environments around them - can form? Gabriele and Sierra walk us through spectroscopy, chemistry (including acetylene, benzene, and more), observational challenges, and the big philosophical questions: Could moons be even more common than planets? What does this tell us about our own Solar System’s past - and the possibilities for life elsewhere?

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