Keynote by Professor Sara Seager, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She works on exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun.
For thousands of years people have wondered, “Are there planets like Earth?” “Are such planets common?” “Do any have signs of life?” Today astronomers are poised to answer these ancient questions, having recently found thousands of planets that orbit nearby Sun-like stars, called “exoplanets”. Professor Sara Seager, one of the world’s leading experts on this search for Earth-like planets, will share the latest advances in this revolutionary field.