Profs & Pints Denver: NASA’s Search for Life Out There

Profs and Pints Denver presents: “NASA’s Search for Life Out There,” on efforts to find habitable worlds beyond our Solar System, with Kevin France, professor in the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and expert on space instruments for the study of extrasolar planets.

[Doors open at 5 pm and the talk begins at 6:30.]

Our knowledge of exoplanets has exploded over the past three decades, to the point where we now know that on average every star in the Milky Way hosts one planetary system. With so many planets now discovered, the question might not be whether life exists elsewhere, but when we might find it.

Learn about the search for other habitable planets with Professor Kevin France, who 

is deeply involved in efforts by the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) to prepare NASA’s upcoming flagship exoplanet mission, the Habitable Worlds Observatory.

Dr. France will discuss recent exoplanet discoveries. He’ll also describe how astronomers have begun studying the atmospheres of other planets to assess their potential for habitability and to search for signs of biological activity. You’ll learn how spectroscopy is used to take the “chemical fingerprint” of other planets’ atmospheres.

We’ll look at how Colorado’s LASP is developing the science and hardware for the Habitable Worlds Observatory and training new generations of scientists and engineers to be involved with it and other missions in the 2030s and 2040s. You’ll gain an understanding of the observatory will operate and how smaller satellite and rocket missions are being undertaken to prepare for it.

Listening to Dr. France, who has led rocket and small satellite missions at LASP and works extensively with the Hubble Space Telescope, will leave you looking up at the night sky not just with wonder, but newfound excitement as well. (Advance tickets $13.50 plus processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with student ID.)

Image: From an artist’s concept of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (NASA).