Program (April 24th and 25th 2021)
Organisation
Each lecture took place on Zoom. Participants (registration is now closed) received an email with the Zoom links (one per lecture) on Friday 23rd April.
All times are in CEST (UTC+02:00).
Satursday 24th APRIL
09:15 - 09:30
Welcome and introduction by the YPF-Team
09:30 - 10:30
Lecture by Prof. Sascha Quanz: “Towards the direct detection of terrestrial exoplanets”
Since the discovery of the first extrasolar planet orbiting a Solar-like star in 1995, exoplanet science has been evolving into a highly dynamic field of modern astrophysics. Today we know more than 4000 exoplanets and thanks to ongoing efforts from the ground and from space this number keeps continuously increasing. In this talk I will briefly review some highlights of exoplanet science and then describe a roadmap how we might be able to directly detect and characterize a large number of terrestrial - possibly even Earth-like - exoplanets in the coming decades.
10:30 - 11:00
Break
11:00 - 12:00
Lecture by Dr. Andrea Fortier: “CHEOPS and its latest results/discoveries”
In 1995, two Swiss astronomers discovered the first exoplanet around a solar like star. Since then, ground and space surveys have discovered more than 4000 exoplanets and the number continuous to increase. The diversity seen in their masses, radii and orbital characteristics has opened a new and dynamical community in astronomy: the exoplanetary science. With a critical mass of researchers in a large variety of topics and a statistically significant number of confirmed objects, the time for the characterisation of these new worlds has come: what is their composition?, how do they form?, could they harbour life?
In December 2019, with the aim of finding hints to answer these questions, the CHaracterising ExOplanet Satellite (CHEOPS) was launched from French Guyana. CHEOPS was selected in 2012 as the first ESA Small Mission, with Switzerland leading a consortium of 11 European countries. After three months of in-orbit commissioning, CHEOPS started its nominal operations at the end of March acquiring images that allow for precise measurements of the exoplanets radii through the transit photometry technique.
In this talk I will present CHEOPS primary objectives, its goals and first scientific results. I will also give an overview of the construction phase, the challenges faced while building a mission in a short time and the current operation of the satellite.
12:00 - 14:00
Break
14:00 - 15:00
Lecture by Chloe Fisher: “Studying Exoplanet Atmospheres from Earth and Space (with Machine Learning)”
The search for life outside the solar system remains one of science’s greatest pursuits. Since the first detection of an exoplanet over 20 years ago, the field of exoplanet atmospheres has exploded, allowing us to determine the conditions on these distant worlds. In this talk I will describe the methods we use to study these atmospheres using data from both space- and ground-based telescopes. I will also present a machine learning method known as a Random Forest, and explain how we are using this to advance our analysis of exoplanet atmospheres.
15:00 - 15:30
Break
15:30 - 16:30
Lecture by Prof. Francesco Pepe: “Exoplanets: From the first detection to their characterisation”
The domain of exoplanets has impressively grown since the discovery of 51 Peg, the first planet around a star other than our Sun, in 1995. While during the first decade after this discovery the main goal was to find as many and as diverse planets as possible in terms of orbital characteristics, during the past 15 years the domain extended to the detailed characterisation of the exoplanets' dynamics, composition and atmosphere. This was also possible thanks to the refinement and improvement of the observational techniques. In my talk I will give an historical overview of this evolution and describe the presently most successful observational techniques.
SUNDAY 25th April
09:00 - 10:00
Lecture by Claudio Valetta: “Planet formation: How do planets form?”
Since 1995, when the first exoplanet around a sun-like star was discovered by Swiss astronomers, exoplanets have been detected at a rapid pace and currently over 4,000 exoplanets have been observed with thousands of candidates that require further confirmation. We now live in an extraordinary time where the old question “Are there planets orbiting other stars?” has been answered and we can better understand our own origin. How do planets formed? What are planets made of? and “What controls planetary diversity?” are the questions that planetary scientists researchers try to answer within the context of planet formation.
In this lecture I will describe our current understanding of how planets form. However keep in mind that the field is still evolving rapidly and many questions remains unanswered. This is what makes research in planet formation so exciting!
10:00 - 10:30
Break
10:30 - 11:30
Lecture by Prof. Christoph Mordasini: “Testing planet formation and evolution theory with observations of extrasolar planets”
In the last two decades, our observational knowledge on the properties of extrasolar planets has made astonishing progress. We now not only know that exoplanets come in an extraordinary diversity not expected from the Solar System, but we also have derived a wealth of fundamental statistical properties of the exoplanet population. Important examples are the distribution of planetary masses, radii, and orbital distances, the composition of the planets, the architectures of planetary systems, or the impact of the properties of the host star around which a planetary system forms. These demographical information makes it possible to test our current theories of planet formation and evolution by statistically comparing the predictions of models with the actual observed population. In this talk, I start with a short overview of some of the most important observational constraints. I then describe how the “distillate” of the results of theoretical models on the many physical processes governing planet formation can be combined into one global model which describe the formation and evolution of entire planetary systems end-to-end, from the origins to the present day. In the following, the results of such models are confronted with reality via comparisons on the population level. The many discrepancies uncovered in this way point at the shortcomings in our current understanding of planet formation and help to identify where future research should be concentrated.
11:30 - 14:00
Break
14:00 - 15:00
Lecture by Prof. Brice-Olivier Demory: “The quest for habitable worlds and a look back at Earth”
The quest for life beyond Earth has a profound impact on all people and civilisations, irrespective of their cultures or beliefs. For millennia, human beings have wondered “are we alone?”. The onset of exoplanet discoveries, which started 20 years ago, inspires hope that this question may be eventually answered. In this talk I will describe some of the recent breakthroughs in exoplanet science including the TRAPPIST-1 system and detail the prospects of characterising life in our solar system and beyond within the next decade. I will also present a new experiment currently in design phase aiming at demonstrating the remote detectability of bio-signatures using spectro-polarimetry. Applications of this technique include novel research in Earth remote sensing and could revolutionise brain cancer diagnosis and staging techniques.
15:00 - 15:30
Break
15:30 - 16:30
Lecture by Marco Cilibrasi: “State of the art of the theoretical and numerical side of planet formation”
Today, we know more than 4 thousand exoplanets, plus the eight planets in the Solar System. This leads us to believe that almost every star develops a planetary system around them. But how do these planets form and evolve? In order to answer this question, lots of simulations, experiments and observations had and still have to be done in a highly multi-disciplinary environment, that covers numerics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, and more. In my talk, I will try to explain the state of the art of the theoretical and numerical side of this field, showing first the early theories and results that provided a first understanding of the formation of giant and terrestrial planets, and covering then the newest findings, that involve even the formation of moons and rings. Through this journey, we are going to learn about the techniques and methods used in the whole community, but we will focus in particular on the work that is being carried on at ETH and at the Universität Zürich.
16:30 - 16:45
Closing and goodbye
Further Information
Costs:
This online forum was free.
Registration:
Registration is now closed.