Discussion Seminars

April 29 2024 at 5pm: Illustrating Worlds Unseen: Art in the Service of Science Communications (Robert Hurt)
April 22 2024: Tracing Volatile Delivery to the Accreting Earth Using Zinc Isotopes (Paul Savage)
April 15 2024: How to swallow a planet: processes and consequences of planet engulfment (Bárbara Soares)
April 8 2024: Life in the Universe, Limits, Locations and Uses (Charles Cockell)
March 25 2024: Astronomy and Astrophysics in Ukrainian Children’s Literature (Emily Finer & Viktoriia Medvied)
March 11 2024: “There is no Planet B” (Raphaelle Haywood and Arwen Nicholson)
Feb 19 2024: “Organics in meteorites and the possibility of microbial life” (Pratibha Gautam)
Feb 12 2024: “The universality of biology, SETI, and our cosmic perspective” (Martin Dominik)
Feb 5 2024: Lunch and General Discussion
Jan 29 2024: “From the South Pole to the Stars” (Emma Puranen)
Dec 4 2023: “Exploring Alien Worlds: How Planetary Environments Drive the Science Fiction Narrative” (Stephen Kane)
Nov 27 2023: “Diverse Exoplanetary Intelligences” (Josep Call)
Nov 13 2023: “UAP and the Ethics of War” (Rory Cox)
Nov 6 2023: “Exoplanetary Seeding and the Value of Abiotic Environments” (Oskari Sivula)
Oct 30 2023: Open Discussion: How has the discovery of exoplanets changed science and society?
Oct 23 2023: “Cosmoimaginaries: Creative Research and Post-Detection SETI” (Kate Genevieve)
Oct 9 2023: “Stellar Activity as a Challenge to Find Earth-like Planets” (Pia Cortes Zuleta)
Sept 18 2023: Welcome Event with short talks by Martin Dominik, Emily Finer, Ancy Anna John, Emma Puranen, and Eva Stueeken.
June 5 2023: Shweta Dalal (The System HDXXXX: A Hidden Gem of Diversity and Mystery)
April 24 2023: Jennifer Kotler (User Experience Designer at Space Telescope Science Institute)
April 13 2023: Lyan I.A. Guez (Real Science, Imaginary Lands: A Scientific Exploration of the Worldbuilding Process)
May 22 2023: General Discussion
10 April 2023: “Characterising the Amount of N2 in an Earth-like Atmosphere ( Can we actually See it?) ” (Lukas Rossmanith)
3 April 2023: “Humanity’s Future in Space” (Dr Natalya Zavina-James, Exploration Science Manager. UK Space Agency)
27 Mar 2023: “Through a Mirror, Earthly: Solaris, Gaia and the Search for Habitable Worlds” (Emma Puranen)
6 Mar 2023: “Peering into the interiors of Earth-like planets across the Milky Way” (Dr Thomas G. Wilson)
13 Feb 2023: “What modern biology and genomics teach us about astrobiology” (Dr Joanne Boden)
6 Feb 2023: “Oumuamua: scientific findings, media interest, and lessons from how it was reported. ” (Dr Emily Finer)
30 Jan 2023: “Hearing the Light: Astronomy Data Sonification” (Clara Brasseur)
5 Dec 2022: “What would Earth 2.0 look like, and could we find it?” (Prof Andrew Collier Cameron)
28 Nov 2022: “Things we’ve found to be universal across communication systems on earth, an interesting starting point for thinking about alien communication systems” (Dr Jasmeen Kanwal)
21 Nov 2022: “The legacy of James Gregory Telescope: A tour”(Dr Aleks Scholz)
14 Nov 2022: “Trouble with the neighbours: stellar outflows and the effects these have on the habitability of orbiting planets” (Prof Moira Jardine)
31 Oct 2022: “Experiences during fieldwork while searching for Mars analogues” (Toni Galloway)
24 Oct 2022: “Understanding Venus’ atmosphere better” (Sean Jordan)
17 Oct 2022: “Why should school students learn about Exoplanets?” (Oriel Marshall)
10 Oct 2022: “The origin of scientific disciplines and the future of astrobiology. Why does the term astrobiology have such a different reputation in Europe compared to the US?” (Dr Eva Stueeken)
03 Oct 2022: “Poetry inspired by astrophysics and astronomy” (Dr Emily Finer)
15 Aug 2022: “The impact of two non-transiting planets and stellar activity on the mass determination of the super-Earth CoRoT-7b” (Ancy Anna John)
8 Aug 2022: “Atmospheres of rocky exoplanets – From clouds to crusts and constraints on habitability by nutrient availability” (Oliver Herbort)
1 Aug 2022: “Blue Marble, Stagnant Lid: Could Dynamic Topography Avert a Waterworld?” (Claire Marie Guimond)
25 Jul 2022: “Magnetic field strengths of hot Jupiters from signals of star-planet interactions” (Clara Brasseur)
20 Jun 2022: “M51-ULS-1b: The First Candidate for a Planet in an External Galaxy” (Ancy Anna John)
13 Jun 2022: “Nitrogen Oxide Concentrations in Natural Waters on Early Earth” (Patrick Barth)
6 Jun 2022: “Why do M dwarfs have more transiting planets?” (Jan-Philip Sindel)
30 May 2022: “Working towards predicting the presence or absence of plate tectonics on exoplanets” (Sami Mikhail)
23 May 2022: “Uncovering the true periods of the young sub-Neptunes orbiting TOI-2076” (Thomas Wilson)
16 May 2022: “Visions of human futures in space and SETI” (Emma Puranen)
9 May 2022: “Fingerprinting molecular and isotopic biosignatures on different hydrothermal scenarios of Iceland, an acidic and sulfur-rich Mars analog” (Toni Galloway)
25 Apr 2022: “UV Absorption by Silicate Cloud Precursors in Ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-178b” (Katy Chubb)
4 Apr 2022: “On the Possibility of Discovering Exoplanets within our Solar System” (Till Käufer), “COWS all tHE way Down (COWSHED) I: Could cow based planetoids support methane atmospheres?” (Patrick Barth)
21 Mar 2022: “Validation of TESS candidates orbiting PLATO, Solar-analog star targets” (Giacomo Mantovan)
14 Mar 2022: “Understanding planetary context to enable life detection on exoplanets and test the Copernican principle” (Joshua Krissansen-Totton)
28 Feb 2022: “A search for longer-period exoplanets with TESS and CHEOPS” (Amy Tuson)
21 Feb 2022: “Rapid-then-slow migration reproduces mass distribution of TRAPPIST-1 system” (Ancy Anna John)
14 Feb 2022: “New time-resolved, Multi-Band Flares in the GJ 65 system with gPhoton” (Clara Brasseur)
7 Feb 2022: “A novel way of measuring the gas disk mass of protoplanetary disks using N₂H⁺ and C¹⁸O” (Till Käufer)
17 Jan 2022: “A pair of Sub-Neptunes transiting the bright K-dwarf TOI-1064 characterised with CHEOPS” (Tom Wilson)
13 Dec 2021: “An upper limit on late accretion and water delivery in the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanet system” (Ludmila Carone)
29 Nov 2021: “Metrics of research impact in astronomy: Predicting later impact from metrics measured 10-15 years after the PhD” (Martin Dominik)
22 Nov 2021: “A New Sedimentation Model for Greater Cloud Diversity in Giant Exoplanets and Brown Dwarfs” (Jan-Philip Sindel)
15 Nov 2021: “Mass determination of protoplanetary disks from dust evolution” (Thorsten Balduin)
8 Nov 2021: “Day–night cloud asymmetry prevents early oceans on Venus but not on Earth” (Oliver Herbort)
1 Nov 2021: “Volcanic controls on the microbial habitability of Mars-analogue hydrothermal environments” (Toni Galloway)
25 Oct 2021: “Bayesian analysis of Enceladus’s plume data to assess methanogenesis” (Antonin Affholder)
18 Oct 2021: “Phosphorus mineral evolution and prebiotic chemistry: From minerals to microbes” (Craig Walton)
11 Oct 2021: “Nitrogen fixation at early Mars” (Patrick Barth)
4 Oct 2021: “Formulation and resolutions of the red sky paradox” (Emma Puranen)
27 Sep 2020: “The Detectability of Nightside City Lights on Exoplanets” (Ancy Anna John)
20 Sep 2021: “Molecules with ALMA at Planet-forming Scales (MAPS) I: Program Overview and Highlights” (Till Käufer)
13 Sep 2021: “Empirically determining Substellar Cloud compositions in the era of JWST” (Jan-Philip Sindel)
6 Sep 2021: “Habitability and Biosignatures of Hycean Worlds” (Dominic Samra)
16 Aug 2021: “The Mass Budgets and Spatial Scales of Exoplanet Systems and Protoplanetary Disks” (Thorsten Balduin)
9 Aug 2021: “Transmission Spectroscopy of the Earth-Sun System to Inform the Search for Extrasolar Life” (Oliver Herbort)
2 Aug 2021: “Molecules for the origin of life from impact-generated atmospheres on early Earth” (Nick Wogan)
26 Jul 2021: “Bifurcation of planetary building blocks during Solar System formation” (Tim Lichtenberg)
19 Jul 2021: “Impact gardening on Europa and repercussions for possible biosignatures” (Patrick Barth)
12 Jul 2021: “Access, Astronomy and Science Fiction: A Case Study in Curriculum Design” (Emma Puranen)
5 Jul 2021: “Transit detection of the long-period volatile-rich super-Earth ν² Lupi d with CHEOPS” (Tom Wilson)
28 Jun 2021: “The misuse of colour in science communication” (Till Käufer)
21 Jun 2021: “Possibilities for an Aerial Biosphere in Temperate Sub Neptune-Sized Exoplanet Atmospheres” (Jan-Philip Sindel)
14 Jun 2021: “The Diversity of Planetary Atmospheric Chemistry” (Patrick Barth)
31 May 2021: “A review on the current and future exoplanet observing facilities” (Tom Wilson)
24 May 2021: “Surface and Temporal Biosignatures” (Anna John)
17 May 2021: “Toward a List of Molecules as Potential Biosignature Gases for the Search for Life on Exoplanets and Applications to Terrestrial Biochemistry” (Oliver Herbort)
19 Apr 2021: “How Will We React to the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life?” (Sven Kiefer)
12 Apr 2021: “What Is Life: Various Definitions Towards The Contemporary Astrobiology” (Till Käufer)
22 Mar 2021: “Representing culture in interstellar messages” (Patrick Barth)
15 Mar 2021: “Alien Tongues” (Emily Finer)
8 Mar 2021: “A language based on the fundamental facts of science” (Thorsten Balduin)
22 Feb 2021: “Absolute Prioritization of Planetary Protection, Safety, and Avoiding Imperialism in All Future Science Missions: A Policy Perspective” (Adam Bower)
15 Feb 2021: “Humans Should Not Colonize Mars” (Emma Puranen)
8 Feb 2021: “Report of the Joint Workshop on Induced Special Regions” (Patrick Barth)
25 Jan 2021: “CO Depletion in Protoplanetary Disks: A Unified Picture Combining Physical Sequestration and Chemical Processing” (Thorsten Balduin)
18 Jan 2021: “MOVES IV. Modelling the influence of stellar XUV-flux, cosmic rays, and stellar energetic particles on the atmospheric composition of the hot Jupiter HD 189733b” (Patrick Barth)
11 Jan 2021: “A Terrestrial-mass Rogue Planet Candidate Detected in the Shortest-timescale Microlensing Event” (Martin Dominik)
7 Dec 2020: “Life under another Sun: From Science Fiction to Science” (Emma Puranen)
23 Nov 2020: “Separating planetary reflex Doppler shifts from stellar variability in the wavelength domain” (Andrew Cameron)
16 Nov 2020: “Orbital Eccentricity – Multiplicity Correlation for Planetary Systems and Comparison to the Solar System” (Nanna Bach-Møller)
2 Nov 2020: “Molecular water detected on the sunlit Moon by SOFIA”, “Micro cold traps on the Moon” (Ancy Anna John, Till Käufer)
26 Oct 2020: “The hot dayside and asymmetric transit of WASP-189 b seen by CHEOPS” (Tom Wilson)
5 Oct 2020: “Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus” (Jane Greaves)
28 Sep 2020: “Mineral dust increases the habitability of terrestrial planets but confounds biomarker detection” (Patrick Barth)
14 Sep 2020: “The Venusian Lower Atmosphere Haze as a Depot for Desiccated Microbial Life: A Proposed Life Cycle for Persistence of the Venusian Aerial Biosphere” (Christiane Helling)
24 Aug 2020: “HCN production in Titan’s Atmosphere: Coupling quantum chemistry and disequilibrium atmospheric modeling” (Dominic Samra)
17 Aug 2020: “Stellar impact on disequilibrium chemistry and observed spectra of hot Jupiter atmospheres” (Denis Shulyak)
10 Aug 2020: Exoplanets 3 Virtual Conference (Samra, Barth, Herbort)
3 Aug 2020: “Revisiting HCN formation in Earth’s early atmosphere” (Lukas Rossmanith)
20 Jul 2020: “Habitability of the early Earth: Liquid water under a faint young Sun facilitated by strong tidal heating due to a nearby Moon” (Oliver Herbort)
13 Jul 2020: “Creation and Evolution of Impact-generated Reduced Atmospheres of Early Earth” (Patrick Barth)
30 Jun 2020: “Interpreting high spatial resolution line observations of planet-forming disks with gaps and rings” (Peter Woitke)
22 Jun 2020: “Streamer discharges in the atmosphere of Primordial Earth” (Christoph Köhn)
15 Jun 2020: “An introduction to streamer discharges” (Christoph Köhn)
8 Jun 2020: “Phosphine as a Biosignature Gas in Exoplanet Atmospheres” (Oliver Herbort)
1 Jun 2020: “Mineral cloud and hydrocarbon haze particles in the atmosphere of the hot Jupiter JWST target WASP-43b” (Christiane Helling)
25 May 2020: “Transient Sulfate Aerosols as a Signature of Exoplanet Volcanism” (Eva Stüeken)
18 May 2020: “Laboratory studies on the viability of life in H₂-dominated exoplanet atmospheres” (Dominic Samra)
11 May 2020: “Atmospheric disequilibrium as an exoplanet biosignature: Opportunities for next generation telescopes” (Patrick Barth)
27 Apr 2020: “Habitability is a binary property” (Dominic Samra)
20 Apr 2020: “A Fossilized Energy Distribution of Lightning” (Eva Stüeken)
13 Apr 2020: “Atmospheric convection plays a key role in the climate of tidally-locked terrestrial exoplanets: insights from high-resolution simulations” (Oliver Herbort)
6 Apr 2020: “Proxima Centauri b: A Strong Case for including Cosmic-Ray-induced Chemistry in Atmospheric Biosignature Studies” (Patrick Barth)
24 Feb 2020: “Lifetimes of interstellar dust from cosmic ray exposure ages of presolar silicon carbide” (Eva Stüeken)
17 Feb 2020: “The storage capacity of fluorine in olivine and pyroxene under upper mantle conditions” (Filippo Formoso)
10 Feb 2020: “Sulfate Aerosol Hazes and SO₂ Gas as Constraints on Rocky Exoplanets” (Oliver Herbort)
27 Jan 2020: “The AMBRE project: searching for the closest solar siblings” (Tom Wilson)
20 Jan 2020: “Understanding the atmospheric properties and chemical composition of the ultra-hot Jupiter HAT-P-7b II. Mapping the effects of gas kinetics” (Dominic Samra)
13 Jan 2020: “Nebula-Relay theory: primitive life in nebula and the origin of life on the earth” (Patrick Barth)
16 Dec 2019: “Prebiotic chemistry and atmospheric warming of early Earth by an active young Sun” (Eva Stüeken)
9 Dec 2019: “The Compositional Diversity of Low-Mass Exoplanets” (Dominic Samra)
2 Dec 2019: “Extrasolar Cosmochemistry” (Tom Wilson)
18 Nov 2019: “A Joint Mass-Radius-Period Distribution of Exoplanets” (Fran Bartolic)
11 Nov 2019: “Lightning in other planets” (Christiane Helling)
28 Oct 2019: “Atmospheric Escape and the Evolution of Close-In Exoplanets” (Oliver Herbort)
7 Oct 2019: “Strict Upper Limits on the Carbon-to-Oxygen Ratios of Eight Hot Jupiters from Self-Consistent Atmospheric Retrieval” (Sonny Harman, Mark Fox-Powell)
30 Sep 2019: “VPLanet: The Virtual Planet Simulator” (Patrick Barth)
23 Sep 2019: “Machine learning on difference image analysis: A comparison of methods for transient detection” (James Hitchcock)
16 Sep 2019: “Water Vapor on the Habitable-Zone Exoplanet K2-18b” (open discussion) link to article
9 Sep 2019: “A sub-Neptune exoplanet with a low-metallicity methane-depleted atmosphere and Mie-scattering clouds” (Dominic Samra)
2 Sep 2019: “Atmosphere-interior Exchange on Hot, Rocky Exoplanets” (Oliver Herbort)
26 Aug 2019: “Discovery of extra-terrestrial life: assessment by scales of its importance and associated risks” (Martin Dominik)
19 Aug 2019: “Detecting life outside our solar system with a large high-contrast-imaging mission (ESA Voyage 2050 white paper)” (Christiane Helling)
5 Aug 2019: “An in-depth look at the Las Cumbres Observatory Scheduler” (Elliott Fogg)
29 Jul 2019: “Experimental exploration of volcanic rocks-atmosphere interaction under Venus surface conditions” (Oliver Herbort)
22 Jul 2019: “The Random Transiter – EPIC 249706694/HD 139139” (Nicole Schanche)
15 Jul 2019: “Equatorial anti-rotating day side wind flow in WASP-43b elicited by deep wind jets?” (Dominic Samra)
24 Jun 2019: “Dreaming Of Atmospheres” (Nicole Schanche)
17 Jun 2019: Introduction to the basics of cloud formation theory and the numerical codes used (Christiane Helling, Peter Woitke)
3 Jun 2019: “Life without definitions” (Ashley Watkins)
27 May 2019: “From Cold to Hot Irradiated Gaseous Exoplanets: Toward an Observation-based Classification Scheme” (Oliver Herbort)
20 May 2019: “Non-grey month-long brightening of KIC 8462852 in the immediate aftermath of a deep dip” (James Hitchcock)
29 Apr 2019: “Effects of a fully 3D atmospheric structure on exoplanet transmission spectra: retrieval biases due to day-night temperature gradients” (Dominic Samra)
22 Apr 2019: “TESS Photometric Mapping of a Terrestrial Planet in the Habitable Zone: Detection of Clouds, Oceans, and Continents” (Fran Bartolic) link to article
15 Apr 2019: “Noble gases recycled into the mantle through cold subduction zones” (Filippo Formoso)
1 Apr 2019: “Fluffy dust forms icy infinitesimals by static compression” (Dominic Samra)
25 Mar 2019: “Radio signals resulting from magnetic activities of planets and stars” (Irena Vorgul)
18 Mar 2019: “Cloud formation in diffusive atmospheres” (Peter Woitke)
11 Mar 2019: “Stellar Activity Effects on Moist Habitable Terrestrial Atmospheres Around M dwarfs” (Oliver Herbort)
18 Feb 2019: “ExoGAN: Retrieving Exoplanetary Atmospheres Using Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks” (Fran Bartolic)
4 Feb 2019: “Can we know anything about aliens without ever seeing one?” (Ethan Landes)
28 Jan 2019: “H₂O abundances and cloud properties in ten hot giant exoplanets” (Christiane Helling)
21 Jan 2019: “Spectrally resolved helium absorption from the extended atmosphere of a warm Neptune-mass exoplanet” (Dominic Samra)
14 Jan 2019: “Trust in Science – a recap” (Ashley Watkins)

Discussion Seminars

Planet-forming disks around stars

The Habitable Zone around Stars

CNRS Sagascience: Exoplanets

Climate and environment

Ethics of exploration and contact