Lecture 34: Habitable Zones around Stars

What stars are near the Sun? Now that we have some idea of what we are looking for - rocky planets in the habitable zones of low-mass main-sequence stars - what are the prospects near the Sun? This lecture examines the hunting ground for planets, the nearby stars that make up the ...  عرض المزيد

Are there planets around other stars? This lecture reviews the methods used to hunt for exoplanets and the results thus far. I will describe direct imaging methods, indirect methods relying on the gravitational influence of the planet on its parent star, planetary transits in whi ...  عرض المزيد

How can we search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and what are we looking for? This second part of a 2-part lecture picks up where we left off yesterday by examining SETI, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, and reviews what we might look for and how. We will use thi ...  عرض المزيد

What is Astronomy? What is Science? What is the course all about? Brief introductory remarks after going over course mechanics on the first day of Astronomy 161 for Autumn Quarter 2007. Recorded 2007 Sep 19 in 1000 McPherson Lab on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University ...  عرض المزيد

Are we alone in the Universe? This lecture explores the question of how we might go about finding life on planets around other stars. Rather than talking about speculative ideas, like the Drake Equation or SETI, I am instead taking the approach of posing it as a problem of what t ...  عرض المزيد