Planetary Systems: The Expanding Frontier

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• Professor Raymond Pierrehumbert, Halley Professor of Physics, Oxford
• Tuesday 15 November 2022, 18:30-19:30
• The Winstanley Lecture Hall, Trinity College, Cambridge.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Max Wong.

Join us in the Winstanley Lecture Theatre next Tuesday at 6:30pm for a talk by Professor Raymond Pierrehumbert, the Halley Professor of Physics at Oxford. The talk will provide a brief introduction on the history and future of the universe, as well as new observations and theoretical advances in planetary formation.

As always, the talk is free and open to all. Light refreshments will be provided before the talk.

Brief bio of speaker: Professor Pierrehumbert is the Halley Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. His main research interests include the physics of climate on different planets, as well as the impact of carbon dioxide emissions and agriculture on the climate here on Earth. His research has also been used in multiple documentaries, most notably Channel 4’s Snowball Earth. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was the lead author on the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as a co-author of the National Research Council on abrupt climate change. In addition, he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has received the Chevalier d’Ordre des Palmes Academiqués and the Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on planetary systems.

Brief abstract: In this lecture, Prof. Pierrehumbert will provide an introduction to the grand sweep of new research in this area, resulting from birth of stars and their associated planets to how it all ends. The possible conditions for life to arise and diversify over the lifetime of a planetary system are a central focus of the subject. This lecture will take you on an exploration through deepest time, from the moment galaxies begin to form after the Big Bang to trillions of years in the future when the Universe will be a dilute soup of dim galaxies populated mostly by red dwarf stars. The lecture will discuss the latest insights gained from a new generation of telescopes that catch planetary systems at the moment of formation, and to the theoretical advances that attempt to make sense of these observations.

This talk is part of the Trinity College Science Society 2022-23 series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• The Winstanley Lecture Hall, Trinity College, Cambridge
• Trinity College Science Society 2022-23

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