1. The Search for Extra-Terrestrial unIntelligence Jonathan Tennyson Department of Physics and Astronomy University College London "The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." Harlan Ellison

3. Is there anybody out there? Sagittarius Star Cloud / Hubble Space Telescope At least 100 thousand million (10 11 or 10 12 ) stars in the milky way At least 100 thousand million (10 11 or 10 12 ) galaxies in the universe

4. How to find aliens 1. Hope that they visit us 2. Listen for their signals 3. Look for them

6. Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) The Arecebo telescope

7. SETI: >500,000,000 screensaver downloads and counting ……What has been found? Nothing

8. Extra solar planets

9. Kepler (the mission) Earth-size planet transiting Sun-type star ~ 0.01 % Kepler (NASA) launch 2009

10. 10 More than 1200 planetary candidates discovered by Kepler! Exoplanets are common…

13. Jupiter—Sun: 15 m/s Present sensitivity: 1 m/s Earth—Sun: 0.09 m/s

14. You are here! Characterizing extrasolar planets

15. Habitable zone for different stars “Goldilocks zone”

16. Earth and moon from the Galileo spacecraft Can one detect the signature of life on Earth?

17. NASA’s Galileo Satellite Launch 1989 Arrived at Jupiter 1995

18. “Flatulent ruminoids” Segan et al, Nature (1995)

19. 100 million+ years ago – Plenty of methane emissions?

20. Time (Gy) Oxygen 1 0.1 0.01 0.001 0.0001 0.00001 4.543.532.521.510.50 Multicell- Human s Invertebrates Rye and Holland, 1998 Oxygen!!! Eukaryotes Prokaryotes Methane ?

21. How far is it to the nearest star? A long way!

22. “ We will never know how to study by any means the chemical composition (of stars), or their mineralogical structure ” Auguste Comte (1835)

23. Fraunhofer ’ s map of the solar spectrum

24. High resolution optical spectrum of the Sun

28. EmissionAbsorption Level 3 Level 2 Level 1 photon Energy Jumping between energy levels in an atom or molecule

29. Methane in the Earth’s atmosphere Before photosynthesis After photosynthesis

30. A pale blue dot, at 6 billion km away… (  ) C. Sagan

31. Direct observation 10 9 photons in the VIS -> Coronagraph 10 6 photons in the IR -> Nulling interferometry Direct observation of star GQ Lupi and its planet GQ Lupi b

32. Transit of Venus June 8th 2004. Next June 5th 2012.

33. Radial velocity / Occultation Period = 3.524738 days Mass = 0.69 ±0.05 M Jupiter Radius = 1.35 ±0.04 R Jupiter Density = 0.35 ±0.05 g/cm 3 HD 209458b

34. NASA’s Spitzer space telescope

35. Beaulieu et al., 2007 Knutson et al., 2007 Primary transit + IR + Spitzer

36. Water, T-P at the terminator Water line list: BT2 Barber et al., 2006 Tinetti et al., Nature, 444, 169 (2007)

37. Methane, plus Confirmation of water and hazes! Beaulieu et al., 2007 Knutson et al., 2007 Swain et al., 2007 Pont et al., 2007

38. Giovanna Tinetti, UCL So far discovered: Water H 2 O Methane CH 4 Carbon dioxide CO 2 Carbon monoxide CO Hydrogen cyanide HCN On HD189733b with more to come HD1897733b too hot for life

39. Transit hunters Transits of objects down to Earth-size COROT (CNES/ESA) launch Dec. 2006 (mission extended) 25 transiting planets found including 1 super-earth Kepler (NASA) launch 6 March 2009. 3.5 year mission: 22 confirmed planets so far + >1200 candidates

40. NWO is a large-class Exoplanet mission that employs two spacecrafts: a “starshade” to suppress starlight before it enters the telescope and a conventional telescope to detect and characterize exo-planets. Cash, Nature, 2006 The New World Observer

41. Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory Telescope Baffle V-groove side sunshield GaAs Solar Cells Detectors Service Module 1.5m silicon carbide mirror

42. Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory 1.2 to 1.5m dedicated telescope L2 halo orbit, direction anti-Sun Broadband spectral coverage from VIS to IR ( 0.4 to 16 µm ) Maximum spectral resolution R=300 5 year mission PI Giovanna Tinetti (UCL) launch 2022?

43. A year in the life of July 10 Talk WCGS Science Conference July 10 European Space Agency (ESA) formal call for M3 missions Oct 10 European Research Council (ERC) awards me 2.5 MEuros for ExoMol: Molecular line lists for exoplanet & other atmospheres Nov 10 59 Expressions interest to ESA Dec 10 43 Formal bids to ESA Jan 11 13 bids selected (including EChO) Feb 11 8 bids selected (including EChO) March 11 4 bids selected for further study: EChO, LOFT, MarcoPolo-R, STEQUEST May 11 ExoMol project starts June 11 UK Space Agency + PPARC select EChO as top priority

44. Future timelines (approximate) 2011-13 Specification and testing 2014 “Down selection” 2015-19 Instrument and satellite build 2019-21 Assembly and testing 2022 Launch ?

45. H 3 + Liesl Neale (H 2 D + Taha Sochi )‏ H 2 O Bob Barber (HDO Boris Voronin )‏ HCN/HNC ( H 13 CN/ H 13 CN ) Greg Harris HeH + Elodie Engel NH 3 Bob Barber and Sergei Yurchenko (Dresden)‏ HCCH Andrea Urru C 3 Santina La Delfa and Taha Sochi Linelists completed or under construction @ UCL by The ExoMol project