[astroseminar at Sapienza] today at 16:00: Giovanna Tinetti (SEMINARIO GENERALE)

[Elia Battistelli]

GENERAL COLLOQUIUM OF THE PHYSICS DEPARTMENT

Title: A chemical survey of planets in our galaxy
Speaker:   Giovanna Tinetti
Institution: University College London
Date: Tuesday, 30 October 2018
Time: 4:00pm
Location: Aula Conversi, Marconi Building, Dept. of Physics, Sapienza 
University

Abstract:
Thousands of exoplanets have now been discovered with a broad range of 
masses, sizes and orbits: from rocky Earth-size planets to large gas 
giants grazing the surface of their host star. However, the essential 
nature of these exoplanets remains largely mysterious: there is no 
known, discernible pattern linking the presence, size, or orbital 
parameters of a planet to the nature of its parent star. We have little 
idea whether the chemistry of a planet is linked to its formation 
environment, or whether the type of host star drives the physics and 
chemistry of the planet’s birth, and evolution. Work in exoplanet 
spectroscopy with current instruments has thus far been very piecemeal 
and mainly focused on gaseous planets.

The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2021 will permit for 
the first time the remote exploration of smaller planets: super-Earths 
and sub-Neptunes. However, progress with the science questions spelled 
out above demands a very large, unbiased spectroscopic survey of 
exoplanets. In the next decade new dedicated space missions, such as the 
ESA's next medium-class science mission ARIEL, have been conceived to 
conduct such a survey and to explore the nature of exoplanet atmospheres 
and, through this, the key factors affecting the formation and evolution 
of planetary systems in our galaxy.

web: https://agenda.infn.it/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=16891