Will E.T. phone home? U of M lecture explores search for alien worlds
Who: Chick Woodward, professor University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy’s Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics
What: Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics lecture on how astronomers detect and characterize planets beyond our solar system and NASA missions designed to search for alien worlds
When: 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 17, 2015
Where: University of Minnesota Bell Museum of Natural History, Auditorium, 10 Church Street S.E., Minneapolis
Registration: The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. To register, visit z.umn.edu/mifalecture.
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (08/21/2015) — Many movies over the last several decades have dramatized our fascination with alien life forms. But could aliens really exist?
An upcoming University of Minnesota lecture entitled “To the Stars We Will Go: The Worlds of Exoplanets” will highlight how astronomers detect and characterize planets outside our solar system that could harbor alien life.
School of Physics and Astronomy Professor Chick Woodward will reflect on the potential requirements of planet habitability zones, share highlights from NASA missions designed to search for alien worlds and note surprises within our own solar systems of bodies that may harbor life at present or have had life in the past. Indeed, we may be at the point where “E.T. will phone home.”
The lecture is sponsored by the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Minnesota.
About the speaker:
Woodward joined the faculty of the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics in 2000. Over the last five years, his research focus has centered on science initiatives using the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope, and the NASA SOFIA airborne observatory. He has also continued his ground-based observational research related to interstellar dust, comets, and evolved stars and stellar populations.
Woodward is the Program Director for the LBTO Corp. coordinating the University of Minnesota's involvement in the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) and access to telescopes of the Steward Observatories. Currently, Woodward is a member of a international collaboration to detect exoplanets around nearby stars as a member of the LEECH team using the LBT Interferometer.
Woodward also teaches variety of undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Minnesota ranging from introductory astronomy, freshman seminars, to graduate courses in planetary science and the interstellar medium.
About the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics (MIfA):
The Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics (MIfA) consists of 22 professors from the School of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Science and Engineering. The primary mission of MIfA is to carry out world-class research and education in the broadly defined areas of astrophysics, cosmology, and planetary and space science. Through these activities the Institute is contributing to the production of the next generation of scientists. MIfA scientists are engaged with research projects spanning the globe using facilities that they have designed and built, shared facilities such as the Large Binocular Telescope on Mt. Graham in Arizona, and international facilities such as NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
For more information, visit astro.umn.edu.