Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The detection of thousands of exoplanets orbiting other stars has revolutionized our view of the cosmos. Even our closest star, Proxima Centauri, harbors a small planet in its habitable zone. With the James Webb Space Telescope, we have started to peer into the atmospheres of rocky planets and get a glimpse into other rocky worlds.
The questions of what makes a planet habitable and how to detect signs of life are lively and long-running ones. Kaltenegger will highlight some of the latest results and discuss the opportunities and challenges of identifying and characterizing such habitable worlds.
Lisa Kaltenegger is an astrophysicist, public speaker, and author. She is the founding director of the Carl Sagan Institute to Search for Life in the Cosmos at Cornell University, professor in astronomy, and author of Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos. She is a pioneer and world-leading expert in modeling habitable worlds and their light fingerprints and has spent the past decade finding new ways to spot life in the cosmos, working with NASA and ESA from Austria to the Netherlands, Harvard, Germany, and now Cornell.
The detection of thousands of exoplanets orbiting other stars has revolutionized our view of the cosmos. Even our closest star, Proxima Centauri, harbors a small planet in its habitable zone. With the James Webb Space Telescope, we have started to peer into the atmospheres of rocky planets and get a glimpse into other rocky worlds.
The questions of what makes a planet habitable and how to detect signs of life are lively and long-running ones. Kaltenegger will highlight some of the latest results and discuss the opportunities and challenges of identifying and characterizing such habitable worlds.
Lisa Kaltenegger is an astrophysicist, public speaker, and author. She is the founding director of the Carl Sagan Institute to Search for Life in the Cosmos at Cornell University, professor in astronomy, and author of Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos. She is a pioneer and world-leading expert in modeling habitable worlds and their light fingerprints and has spent the past decade finding new ways to spot life in the cosmos, working with NASA and ESA from Austria to the Netherlands, Harvard, Germany, and now Cornell.
