David Elder Lectures - Prof Raymond Pierrehumbert presents Strange New Worlds

Not long ago, for all we knew our Solar System might have held the only planets in the Universe. Though it had been long anticipated that other stars hosted planets, dramatic developments of astronomy in the past two decades have revealed that the Universe is teeming with planets. In fact, it turns out that it is hard to make a star without also making some planets out of the material left over. Now, with the James Webb Space Telescope, we are able to take a deep dive into what these planets are really like.

In this talk, I’ll give a grand tour of some of the exotic planets out there that are unlike anything we know in the Solar System: Lava planets with oceans of molten rock on a permanent dayside; Hot Jupiters where it rains droplets of iron; Miniature Neptunes, with atmospheres thousands of times thicker than Earth’s. And who knows — out there somewhere there may be a planet with a liquid water ocean hospitable for life — and maybe even inhabited. We haven’t found it yet, but it’s out there waiting for us.