Lasse Nybro Nielsen

TRAPPIST-1 and the search for habitable exoplanets

Supervisor: Simon Albrecht

Date Student Colloquium: 04/05/17 15:15

In recent years we have found a multitude of potentially habitable planets outside the solar system. With the very recent discoveries made by Kepler, TRAPPIST, and MEarth the search (and characterization) of habitable planets has become an exciting sub-branch of astronomy.

This talk will include an introduction of how to find planets outside the solar system and what methods the different aforementioned projects use to observe planetary transits. I will focus on TRAPPIST-1, the first system with habitable planets observed by the telescope TRAPPIST.  Here I  will also compare the properties of the solar system and TRAPPIST-1. Furthermore the talk will include a discussion on the concept of a Dyson-Sphere, how we might observe one, and what the implications of a Dyson-Sphere would be.