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Extra-terrestrial life: Is there anybody out there? Dr Martin Hendry University of Glasgow Reach for the Stars
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Is there Anybody Out There? Extra-Solar Planets Life in the Solar System? Searching for Life
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Life in the Solar System
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Runaway Greenhouse Effect
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Formation of the Moon: Impact from Mars-sized planetesimal during first aeon.
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Impact energy = 1 million million megatons 5 billion cubic miles of the crust sprayed into space Atmosphere ejected into space Ring of ejecta coalesces into Moon
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Is there life on Mars?…
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Mars 2004: Mars Express ( + Beagle 2) Spirit + Opportunity
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Jan 23 rd 2004: Mars Express Orbiter detects water ice at the South Pole of Mars.
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Jan 23 rd 2004: Mars Express Orbiter detects water ice at the South Pole of Mars.
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Jan 23 rd 2004: Mars Express Orbiter detects water ice at the South Pole of Mars. H2OH2O CO 2 Visible light
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Water on Mars Images suggest flowing water on Mars in the past Mars Earth
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2mm
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The moons of Jupiter
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Isaac Newton: 1642 – 1727 AD The Principia: 1684 - 1686
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The tidal pull of the Moon on the Earth
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Galileo’s Moons
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Inside Europa Could there be life?…..
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The stars are VERY far away. The nearest star (after the Sun) is about 40 million million km from the Earth. It takes light more than 4 years to travel this distance.. If the distance from the Earth to the Sun were the width of this screen, the nearest star would be in Paris !!!! EXTRA-SOLAR PLANETS
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Wobbling stars: the key to finding extra-solar planets Planets and stars orbit their common centre of mass Planets are too faint to see directly - so stars wobble but
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The Sun’s “wobble”, due to Jupiter, seen from 30 light years away = width of a 5p piece in Baghdad
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Doppler Shift
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Star Laboratory
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The origin of spectral lines
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Absorption e -
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Emission e -
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Star Laboratory
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51 Peg – the first new planet
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What have we learned about exoplanets? Highly active, and rapidly changing, field Aug 2000: 29 exoplanets
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What have we learned about exoplanets? Highly active, and rapidly changing, field Aug 2000: 29 exoplanets 2004: ~120 exoplanets
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What have we learned about exoplanets? Highly active, and rapidly changing, field Aug 2000: 29 exoplanets Up-to-date summary at http://www.exoplanets.org Now finding planets at larger orbital semimajor axis 2004: ~120 exoplanets
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1. The Doppler wobble technique will not be sensitive enough to detect Earth-type planets (i.e. Earth mass at 1 A.U.), but will continue to detect more massive planets Looking to the Future
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1. The Doppler wobble technique will not be sensitive enough to detect Earth-type planets (i.e. Earth mass at 1 A.U.), but will continue to detect more massive planets 2. The ‘position wobble’ (astrometric) technique will detect Earth-type planets – Space Interferometry Mission in 2009 (already done with HST in Dec 2002 for a 2 x Jupiter-mass planet) Looking to the Future
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1. The Doppler wobble technique will not be sensitive enough to detect Earth-type planets (i.e. Earth mass at 1 A.U.), but will continue to detect more massive planets 2. The ‘position wobble’ (astrometric) technique will detect Earth-type planets – Space Interferometry Mission in 2009 (already done with HST in Dec 2002 for a 2 x Jupiter-mass planet) 3. The Kepler mission (launch 2007?) will detect transits of Earth-type planets, by observing the brightness dip of stars (already done in 2000 with Keck for a 0.5 x Jupiter-mass planet)
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1. The Doppler wobble technique will not be sensitive enough to detect Earth-type planets (i.e. Earth mass at 1 A.U.), but will continue to detect more massive planets 2. The ‘position wobble’ (astrometric) technique will detect Earth-type planets – Space Interferometry Mission in 2009 (already done with HST in Dec 2002 for a 2 x Jupiter-mass planet) 3. The Kepler mission (launch 2007?) will detect transits of Earth-type planets, by observing the brightness dip of stars (already done in 2000 with Keck for a 0.5 x Jupiter-mass planet) Looking to the Future There was a (rare) transit of Mercury on May 7 th 2003, and a (very rare) transit of Venus on June 8 th 2004
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4. NASA: Terrestrial Planet Finder ESA: Darwin Looking to the Future } ~ 2015 launch These missions plan to use nulling interferometry to ‘blot out’ the light of the parent star, revealing Earth-mass planets
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4. NASA: Terrestrial Planet Finder ESA: Darwin Looking to the Future } ~ 2015 launch These missions plan to use nulling interferometry to ‘blot out’ the light of the parent star, revealing Earth-mass planets Follow-up spectroscopy will search for signatures of life:- Spectral lines of oxygen, water carbon dioxide in atmosphere Simulated ‘Earth’ from 30 light years ESP
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What will TPF look for?….
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Earth from 30 lyrs
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Is there anybody out there?…. ….if there isn’t, it seems a terrible waste of space !!!! a terrible waste of space !!!!
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