NBIA Colloquium: Laura Kreidberg

Friday, May 9 at 3:15 PM in Aud. A

Speaker:Laura Kreidberg (Max Planck Institute, Heidelberg)

Title: Copernicus Revisited: is the Earth special?

Abstract: Nearly 500 years ago, Nicolas Copernicus published his disruptive theory that Earth is not the center of the universe. This "Copernican demotion" has held fast over the centuries, as astronomers have learned that there is nothing particularly remarkable about Earth or even the Milky Way. In the last two decades, however, a new test of the Copernican Principle has emerged -- the discovery of an abundance of planets orbiting other stars. These discoveries allow us to put Earth in context and evaluate whether the formation, architecture, and present-day characteristics of our Solar System are in fact typical. Thanks to the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), we are finally able to study other Earth-size planets in detail, and in particular search for and characterize their atmospheres. In this talk, I will give a status report on JWST observations of rocky planets. I will cover the latest results for the iconic TRAPPIST-1 system, the study of the surface of the airless planet LHS 3844b, the search for atmospheres on lava worlds, and observations of planets in the radius valley at the boundary of rocky and gaseous worlds. Taken together, these results provide a first picture of the building blocks available for the origin of life on terrestrial planets beyond the Solar System, providing essential context for how special Earth really is.

Brief bio-sketch: Laura Kreidberg is the founding director of the APEx Department at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. Her research focuses on atmosphere characterization of extra-solar planets, and she is a frequent user of space-based telescopes. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the 2016 International Astronomical Union Division F PhD Prize Prior and the 2021 Annie Jump Cannon Award of the American Astronomical Society. Prior to her move to Germany, Laura was a Clay Fellow at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a Harvard Junior Fellow. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2016 and was an undergraduate at Yale University.

Refreshments in the NBIA Lounge after the talk!