Exploring Strange New Worlds: Rocky Exoplanet Atmospheres with JWST

Can we learn about the history and geology of a rocky planet like Earth by measuring its atmosphere? In just a few decades, astronomers have gone from wondering whether planets exist around other stars to discovering thousands of them. Now the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is taking the next step: not just finding these worlds, but beginning to study what they’re like - including whether they have atmospheres at all, which are critical for planetary habitability. In this talk, we’ll meet the small, rocky exoplanets that are most like the inner planets of our own Solar System, and see how JWST looks for the faint chemical fingerprints of gases around distant worlds. We’ll also tour what JWST has discovered so far, what has surprised us, and why some planets seem to lose their atmospheres while others manage to hold on. Along the way, we’ll connect these observations to bigger questions about how planets evolve - and what it might take for a world to be truly Earth-like.

Speaker: Laura Schaefer, Stanford University

Register at weblink to attend in person or watch online.