Uploaded April 2022 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
About this event
We’ve discovered many planets orbiting other stars with sizes similar to our own Earth. But size alone does not birth a home world. How did the Earth become habitable, and what does this mean for finding another planet capable of hosting life? In this talk, we will take a look at our own past and how we might unpick the beginnings of life from missions such as Japan's Hayabusa2, before zooming away from our Solar System to what we have discovered about planets around other Suns and how we might determine if any of them could be a home for our neighbours.
Prof Elizabeth Tasker is an astrophysicist and science communicator at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Her research focusses on computer simulations of star and planet formation, and she is part of the global public outreach team on JAXA missions such as Hayabusa2 and MMX. Tasker's popular science book, ’The Planet Factory’, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing House in 2017, and she is a writer for the NASA NExSS ‘Many Worlds’ blog.
About this event
We’ve discovered many planets orbiting other stars with sizes similar to our own Earth. But size alone does not birth a home world. How did the Earth become habitable, and what does this mean for finding another planet capable of hosting life? In this talk, we will take a look at our own past and how we might unpick the beginnings of life from missions such as Japan's Hayabusa2, before zooming away from our Solar System to what we have discovered about planets around other Suns and how we might determine if any of them could be a home for our neighbours.
Prof Elizabeth Tasker is an astrophysicist and science communicator at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Her research focusses on computer simulations of star and planet formation, and she is part of the global public outreach team on JAXA missions such as Hayabusa2 and MMX. Tasker's popular science book, ’The Planet Factory’, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing House in 2017, and she is a writer for the NASA NExSS ‘Many Worlds’ blog.
