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Brave new worlds: the planets and others starsProfessor Giovanna Tinetti, UCL(Venue: Geological Society Lecture Theatre - no booking required) The Earth is special to us – it's our home. But is it really special as a planet? Every star we can see in the night sky is likely to be orbited by planets. There are probably a hundred billion planets in our galaxy alone.
In less than 30 years, more than 3000 "exoplanets" have been discovered in distant solar systems. There are planets completing a revolution in less than one day, as well as planets orbiting two or even three stars or moving on trajectories so eccentric as to resemble comets. Some of them are freezing cold, some are so hot that their surface is molten. But beyond that our knowledge falters: What are they made of? How did they form? What's the weather like there? Are they habitable?
Finding out why are these new worlds as they are, is one of the key challenges of modern astrophysics. Giovanna Tinetti is Professor of Astrophysics at University College London, where she coordinates a research team on extrasolar planets since 2007. She is Principal Investigator of ARIEL, one of the three candidate-missions selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) for its next medium class (M4) science mission, due for launch in 2026 and Science Lead for the Twinkle UK space mission, designed to investigate the atmospheric composition and temperature of exoplanets.
Select appointments and achievements include Principal Investigator, European Research Council-funded programme "Exo-Lights", co-editor of American Astronomical Society DPS journal, ICARUS, and Institute of Physics Moseley medal 2011 for pioneering use of IR transmission spectroscopy for molecular detection in exoplanet atmospheres.
Awarded a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Turin in Italy, Giovanna is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and has previously been an ESA external fellow in Paris and NASA Astrobiology Institute/NRC fellow at Caltech/JPL.
In less than 30 years, more than 3000 "exoplanets" have been discovered in distant solar systems. There are planets completing a revolution in less than one day, as well as planets orbiting two or even three stars or moving on trajectories so eccentric as to resemble comets. Some of them are freezing cold, some are so hot that their surface is molten. But beyond that our knowledge falters: What are they made of? How did they form? What's the weather like there? Are they habitable?
Finding out why are these new worlds as they are, is one of the key challenges of modern astrophysics. Giovanna Tinetti is Professor of Astrophysics at University College London, where she coordinates a research team on extrasolar planets since 2007. She is Principal Investigator of ARIEL, one of the three candidate-missions selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) for its next medium class (M4) science mission, due for launch in 2026 and Science Lead for the Twinkle UK space mission, designed to investigate the atmospheric composition and temperature of exoplanets.
Select appointments and achievements include Principal Investigator, European Research Council-funded programme "Exo-Lights", co-editor of American Astronomical Society DPS journal, ICARUS, and Institute of Physics Moseley medal 2011 for pioneering use of IR transmission spectroscopy for molecular detection in exoplanet atmospheres.
Awarded a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Turin in Italy, Giovanna is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and has previously been an ESA external fellow in Paris and NASA Astrobiology Institute/NRC fellow at Caltech/JPL.