Building a List of Earth Candidates

By studying their atmospheres and interiors, PAOC's Sara Seager, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Planetary Science in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and professor in MIT’s Department of Physics tries to make sense of the 500 or so exoplanets that have been discovered since 1995. Read this three-part series on Exoplanet research from the MIT News Office:

Part 1: Building a list of Earth candidates Describing how MIT researchers increase their odds of detecting an Earthlike planet by working on a combination of satellite missions.

Part 2: Learning from hot Jupiters Describing how studying how massive planets may have formed, MIT astrophysicists sets the stage for studying smaller, more Earthlike planets.

Part 3: The final frontier Now that an Earthlike planet has been discovered, the key to confirming that it can host life will be to study its atmosphere in detail.