Overview

Are we alone? This is one of the most monumental and consequential questions humanity has asked itself. In the coming decades, we may finally know whether simple life is common or exceedingly rare in our cosmic neighborhood. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), set for launch in 2018, is our first chance to characterize 1-3 habitable planets around nearby stars with transmission spectroscopy

UW astronomy graduate student Edward Schwieterman will review plans to identify and characterize potentially habitable planets. He will also present his own research on identifying astronomical habitability markers and biosignatures, especially in the context of reducing our uncertainty about potential “false positives” for life.