Posted on 03/17/2014 2:01:33 PM PDT by iowamark
Motivated by the rapidly increasing number of known Earth-sized planets, the increasing range of extreme conditions in which life on Earth can persist, and the progress toward a technology that will ultimately enable the search for life on exoplanets, the Vatican Observatory and the Steward Observatory announce a major conference entitled The Search for Life Beyond the Solar System: Exoplanets, Biosignatures & Instruments.
Goal: The goal of the conference is to bring together the interdisciplinary community required to address this multi-faceted challenge: experts on exoplanet observations, early and extreme life on Earth, atmospheric biosignatures, and planet-finding telescopes.
Format: The sessions of the five-day meeting will include invited review and contributed talks, followed by extended discussions. There will be posters, but no parallel sessions. We will limit the number of attendees to 250 to allow interactions between the participants. The conference will include a banquet (Wednesday evening) and an afternoon break (Tuesday) and two evening slots for collaborative team meetings. The Friday morning session will include a coordinated discussion that will provide input for a conference summary.
| Day | Program |
| Friday - Sunday (3/14-3/16) | Pre-Conf. School |
| Sunday evening 4:30-6:00 PM | Welcome Reception at Turquoise I Ballroom |
| Monday AM | Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Life and Rocky Planet Atmospheres and Biosignatures |
| Monday PM | |
| Monday evening | ~2h slot open for team meetings |
| Tuesday AM | Rocky Planet Atmospheres and Biosignatures |
| Tuesday PM | Excursion / Social Program |
| Tuesday Evening | Free / Poster session |
| Wednesday AM | Rocky Planet Atmospheres and Biosignatures and Transiting Exoplanets: From State of the Art to the Near Future |
| Wednesday PM | |
| Wednesday Evening | Conference Dinner |
| Thursday AM | Direct Imaging: From State of the Art to the Near Future |
| Thursday PM | |
| Thursday Evening | ~2h slot open for posters / team meetings |
| Friday AM | Direct Imaging: From State of the Art to the Near Future (continued) |
| Friday AM | Panel Discussion |
| Friday PM | Search for Extraterrestrial Technology |
| Friday Evening | Informal social program for those who stay for next meeting |
| Saturday-Tuesday | LBTO Users Meeting at Westward Look [Independently Org.] |
| Sunday 4:30-6:00 PM Opening Reception at Turquoise I Room, Hilton El Conquistador; Registration |
| Monday - Session I Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Life |
|
| 9:00-9:15 | Welcome: Buell Jannuzi (Steward Observatory) and José Funes (Vatican Observatory) |
| 9:15-9:45 | John Baross: The Limits of Earth Life (Invited) |
| 9:45-10:15 | Steve Benner: Alien Biochemistries and Metabolic Byproducts Leading to Atmospheric Biosignatures (Invited) |
| 10:15-10:35 | Yu Komatsu: Toward understanding as photosynthetic biosignatures: light harvesting and energy transfer calculation |
| 10:40-11:00 | Coffee Break |
| 11:00-11:30 | Lynn Rothschild: Synthetic Biology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life (Invited) |
| 11:30-12:15 | Poster Session |
| 12:15-1:30 | Lunch break |
| Session II - Habitable Planets and Biosignatures | |
| 1:30-2:00 | Victoria Meadows: Factors Affecting the Habitability of Earth-like Planets (Invited) |
| 2:00-2:20 | Ilaria Pascucci: An enhanced carbon chemistry in disks around very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs? |
| 2:20-2:40 | Evgenya Shkolnik: HAZMAT I: The Evolution of X-ray, Far-UV and Near-UV Emission from Early M Stars |
| 2:40-3:00 | John Lee Grenfell: Response of Biomarkers to NOx-induced from Stellar Cosmic Rays for Earth-like Planets in the HZ of M-Dwarf Stars |
| 3:00-3:20 | Coffee Break + Posters |
| 3:20-3:40 | Feng Tian: Stability and Oxygen Contents of the Atmospheres of Planets in the HZ of M dwarfs |
| 3:40-4:00 | Sarah Rugheimer: Influence of UV activity on the Spectral Fingerprints of Earth-like Planets around M dwarfs |
| 4:00-4:20 | Miguel Yamila: Spectral features of Mini-Neptunes and EGP orbiting different stars: exploring the effect of high stellar FUV radiation |
| 4:20-4:40 | Nader Haghighipour: Dynamical Evolution and Migration of Circumbinary Planets and Their Habitability |
| 4:40-5:00 | William Welsh: Observations of Kepler Habitable Zone Circumbinary Planets |
| 5:30-7:00 | Poster viewing |
| Tuesday - Session II Habitable Planets and Biosignatures |
|
| 9:00-9:20 | Shoji Ueta: Ice-covered terrestrial planets |
| 9:20-9:40 | Eliza Kempton: Lessons from the First Observations of Super-Earth Atmospheres |
| 9:40-10:00 | Jade Carter-Bond: Terrestrial planet composition: simulation and observation |
| 10:00-10:20 | Rory Barnes: A Method to Identify the Boundary Between Rocky and Gaseous Exoplanets from Tidal Theory and Transit Durations |
| 10:20-10:40 | Coffee Break + Posters |
| 10:40-11:10 | Sara Seager: On The Reliability/ambiguity of Atmospheric Biosignatures and Key Challenges for Biosignature Studies |
| 11:10-11:30 | Eduardo Janot Pacheco: A New Paradigm for Habitability in Planetary Systems: the Extremophilic Zone |
| 11:30-11:50 | Enric Palle: Modeling the globally-integrated spectral variability of the Archean Earth: The purple planet |
| 11:50-12:10 | David Soderblom: The problem of stellar ages |
| 12:10-2:00 | Lunch break + Poster viewing |
| 2:00-6:00 | Afternoon Excursions A) Biosphere 2 B) Mirror Lab, Tree Ring Lab, and UA Campus C) Desert Museum For all three excursions meeting points are at the hotel lobby, buses leaving at 2:00pm and return between 6:00-6:15pm. |
| 6:30-7:30 | Poster Session |
| 7:30 | Public Lecture Speaker: Jill Tarter, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for the SETI Institute Topic: The Cosmos & You: A Presentation on Astrobiology and the Future Why investing in the Search for Intelligent Life Beyond Earth is Important to the Long Term Future of Humanity Location: Social Science Bldg, Room 100, University of Arizona Transportation: 6:30pm depart hotel to UA Campus Depart UA Campus to hotel upon completion of lecture |
| Wednesday Session II - Habitable Planets and Biosignatures (continued) |
|
| 9:00-9:20 | Edwin Turner: Direct Imaging Detectability of Tidally Heated ExoMoons (THEM) |
| 9:20-9:40 | Shim Sang-Heon: Un-Earth-Like Interiors of Earth-Like Exoplanets |
| 9:40-10:00 | Adam Showman: Atmospheric circulation and climate of terrestrial exoplanets and super Earths |
| 10:00-10:20 | Gijs Mulders: The Water Content of Exo-earths in the Habitable Zone |
| 10:20-11:00 | Coffee Break + Posters |
| Session III - Transiting Exoplanets: From State of the Art to the Near Future | |
| 11:00-11:30 | Natalie Batalha: Eta Earth and Insights from Kepler on the Frequency of Earth- sized Planets in the Habitable Zone (Invited) |
| 11:30-11:50 | Beatriz González-Merino: Jupiter’s transmission spectrum |
| 11:50-12:10 | Thomas Barclay: The first Earth-sized habitable zone exoplanets |
| 12:10-1:30 | Lunch break |
| 1:30-2:00 | Ignas Snellen: Characterizing the Atmospheres of Transiting Planets from the Ground (Invited) |
| 2:00-2:20 | Brice-Olivier Demory: Space-based Characterization of super-Earth exoplanets |
| 2:20-2:40 | Rene Doyon: Transit Spectroscopy with NIRISS on JWST |
| 2:40-3:00 | Wesley Traub: An Estimate of Eta-Earth, From Simulating Kepler Data |
| 3:00-3:20 | David Latham: Rocky Planet Results from HARPS-N |
| 3:20-3:40 | Coffee Break + Posters |
| 3:40-4:10 | Heiker Rauer: Observations of Extrasolar Planet Transits: What’s Next? (Invited) |
| 4:10-4:30 | George Ricker: The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite Mission |
| 4:30-4:50 | Daniel Rouan: Could we constrain some major properties of hot Super-Earths with NIRSPEC-JWST spectra? |
| 4:50-5:10 | Andreas Quirrenbach: CARMENES: Looking for Blue Planets Orbiting Red Dwarfs |
| 6:30 | Conference Dinner |
| Thursday - Session IV Direct Imaging: From State of the Art to the Near Future |
|
| 9:00-9:20 | Beth Biller: The Gemini/NICI Planet-Finding Campaign: The Frequency of Planets around Young Moving Group Stars |
| 9:20-9:40 | Laird Close: H-alpha as a Probe of Very Low-mass Planets: The GAPplanetS Survey With the MagAO System |
| 9:40-10:00 | Jenny Patience: Gemini Planet Imager First Light and Campaign Survey |
| 10:00-10:20 | Andy Skemer: LEECH: LBTI Exozodi Exoplanet Common Hunt |
| 10:20-10:40 | Coffee Break + Posters |
| 10:40-11:10 | Markus Kasper: Capabilities and Expected Results from Next-Generation Adaptive Optics Systems (Invited) |
| 11:10-11:30 | Christoph Keller: Towards Polarimetric Exoplanet Imaging with ELTs |
| 11:30-11:50 | Klaus Strassmeier: Biosignatures from circular spectropolarimetry: key science for ELTs? |
| 11:50-12:10 | William Sparks: Remotely sensing homochirality, a powerful generic biosignature |
| 12:10-1:30 | Lunch break |
| 1:30-2:00 | Phil Hinz: The Challenge of the Exozodiacal Light (Invited) |
| 2:00-2:20 | Denis Defrère: The Hunt for Observable Signatures of Terrestrial Planetary Systems (HOSTS) |
| 2:20-2:50 | Olivier Guyon: Coronagraphy — From State of the Art to the Near Future (Invited) |
| 2:50-3:10 | Charles Beichman: The Near-Infrared Camera on the James Webb Space Telescope: The Next Great Step in Exoplanet Research |
| 3:10-3:30 | Coffee Break + Conference Photo |
| 3:30-4:00 | Alain Leger: Searching for extrasolar life, the capabilities of affordable missions as a function of ηearth (Invited) |
| 4:00-4:20 | Antoine Crouzier: NEAT: an astrometric space telescope to search for habitable exoplanets in the solar neighborhood |
| 4:20-4:40 | Eduardo Bendek: Direct Imaging of Exoplanets around Alpha Centauri and Other Multiple Star Systems |
| 4:40-5:00 | Jared Males: Direct Imaging of Extrasolar Giant Planets in the Habitable Zone |
| 5:00-7:00 | Poster session / Team meetings |
| Friday - Sessions IV and V Direct Imaging: From State of the Art to the Near Future Search for Extraterrestrial Technology |
|
| 9:00-9:30 | Peter Lawson: High-Contrast Imaging and Interferometry Mission Concepts for The Characterization of Exoplanets (Invited) |
| 9:30-9:50 | Nick Siegler: Technology Development Towards a Flight Coronagraph |
| 9:50-10:10 | Jeff Kuhn: Enabling Technologies for Detecting Life in the Universe: The Colossus Project |
| 10:15-10:45 | Coffee Break + Poster Session |
| 10:45-12:00 | Panel Discussion |
| 12:00-1:30 | Lunch break |
| 1:30-2:00 | Jill Tarter: SETI: Past, Present, Future (Invited) |
| 2:00-2:20 | Eric Korpela: SETI Programs at the University of California, Berkeley |
| 2:20-2:40 | Shauna Sallmen: Indications of Technology in Planetary Transit Light Curves due to Dark-side Illumination |
| 2:40-3:00 | Ian Morrison: Extending Galactic Habitable Zone Modelling to Include the Emergence of Intelligent Life |
| 3:00-3:20 | Coffee Break |
| 3:20-3:50 | Closing Remarks |
Do exoplanets give us hugs and kisses?
This one is free:
A good definition of life is that it persists. For example, toss a cube of sugar in a bowl of water. Toss a fish in a bowl of water. Which persists longer?
This has to do with entropy. Life collects low entropy energy, uses that energy to maintain a lower level of entropy within itself, and expels high entropy energy (or matter — think feces).
So, a planet full of life will do the same thing: Expel more high entropy energy than a planet not full of life.
Detect that, and you have detected life. How do you do that? The problem is left as an exercise for the student. (IOW, I have no freaking idea.)
Incidentally, sunlight is surprisingly (Thank You, God — seriously) low entropy energy. Hence it is the fountain for life on Earth.
Maybe some form of spectrum analysis could be used to detect that the radiation emitted by an exoplanet has higher entropy vis-a-vis its star than would result from the presence of non-life processes?
I think all such proceeding should be prefaced by a memorial reading of Michael Crichton’s Caltech Michelin Lecture from 2003
Or... just look for methane.
Methane isn’t unusual in the universe. Titan has oceans of methane.
Seems to me that we should be able to detect signs of biology from the atmospheres, even of exoplanets. High nitrogen and CO2 traces in spectra would appear a tipoff.
That’s what I always say.
We don’t need life we can talk to, we need life we can eat.
CO2 and N2 are inert gases that could appear anywhere; free oxygen in the atmosphere is what you’re really looking for. Oxygen can’t exist long term without being continuously replenished via photosynthesis.
There are numerous Class M planets in the galaxy. Most have humanoid life. Most speak English. We just have to develop warp drive so we can travel light years through space to find them.
Very cool freebie program from NASA. Interactive map of exoplanets.
http://eyes.nasa.gov/exoplanets/index.html
/mark
How about searching for intelligent life on this planet first....I suggest looking outside of Washington DC.
Where there is life, there is poop!
Or, as Solomon stated a bit more elegantly:
An empty barn is a clean barn,
But great is the strength of the Ox.”
Even so, the same overall argument would seem to apply.
As far as we know, are there any planets that do have 'life', that don't have 'methane' ?
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