Discussion Seminars

 

Planet-forming disks around stars

planet-forming disks
Planets form in protoplanetary disks as by-product of star formation. Artist’s conception of the dust and gas disk surrounding the star Beta Pictoris. (Credit: NASA/Lynette Cook)

 

The Habitable Zone around Stars

habilitable zone
This plot shows the extension of the Habitable Zone around F, G, K, and M stars. The Warm ‘Habitable’ Zone is divided into a narrower ‘Conservative Habitable Zone’ (light green) and a wider ‘Optimistic Habitable Zone’ (dark green). Earth is at the inner edge of the ‘Conservative Habitable Zone.’   (Credit: PHL@UPR Arecibo)

 

CNRS Sagascience: Exoplanets

Sagascience Exoplanets
What does an exoplanet look like? What are the detection techniques and instruments? A line-up of remarkable exoplanets? Hypotheses about extraterrestrial civilizations? The challenges facing astrobiology and geochemistry?   (Credit: CNRS/sagascience)

 

Climate and environment

Volcano Plosky Tolbachik in Kamchatka
Knowing the geological history of our own solar system will help us to understand exosystems and to constrain the environmental conditions of these exoplanets with the aim of addressing if they are potentially habitable. Eruption of volcano Plosky Tolbachik, Kamchatka. (Credit: AirPano)

 

Ethics of exploration and contact


Responsibility. Values. Trust. How would our world change if we found complex lifeforms elsewhere in the universe? Antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA) on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes. (Credit: ESO/C. Malin)