Searching for Habitable Worlds around Nearby very-low-mass Stars

Is There Life Beyond Our Solar System?

Professors Michaël Gillon and Heike Rauer will take us on a voyage of discovery into space on Thursday 3 November 2022, at a conference to be held at the Belgian Embassy in Berlin as part of Berlin Science Week.

This conference, organised by Wallonie-Bruxelles International in close collaboration with the Délégation Générale Wallonie-Bruxelles in Berlin, questions the discovery of planets with characteristics similar to those of our Earth that could harbour life forms. This conference is part of Wallonia-Brussels’ programme for Berlin Science Week, an international scientific event in which world-renowned scientists are participating. And Wallonia-Brussels has some exceptional ones.

What is about ?

Since the end of the last century, thousands of planets have been detected in orbit around other stars than the Sun. A few dozens of these exoplanets are said to be “potentially habitable”, i.e. they could be rocky worlds harboring oceans of water on their surface, like our Earth. Imagining complex forms of life on some of these planets is but a small step away, one that is happily crossed by science-fiction. But our imagination is about to be replaced by real scientific measurements, as we now have the instrumental means to probe the atmospheric compositions of some of these extrasolar worlds in orbit around nearby very-low-mass stars.  So far, the best targets for such atmospheric studies are the seven Earth-sized planets found a few years ago around TRAPPIST-1, a tiny red dwarf star 40 light-years away.

Michaël Gillon, the Belgian astrophysicist who led the discovery of this planetary system, will tell us everything about it and will explain us how the study of exoplanets is bringing us closer and closer to an answer to the fascinating question Is there life elsewhere in the Universe?

He will be supported in its Lecture by Prof Dr. Heike Rauer (German Aerospace Centre (DLR) /Head of the Institute of Planetary Research (Freie Universität Berlin) who will focus on the expected contributions coming from ESA´s PLATO mission.

PROGRAM

18:00 – 18:30: Welcome

18:30 – 18:35: Opening remarks

Alexander Homann – Leiter der Vertretung Ostbelgiens, der Föderation Wallonie-Brüssel und der Wallonie  in Berlin,
Mathieu Quintyn, Wallonia-Bruxelles International – Science and Technology Counsellor – Germany

18:35 – 20:00: Lectures (+ questions) – Is There Life Beyond Our Solar System?

Prof Dr. Michaël GILLON – astrophysicist and FNRS Research Director at the University of Liege, Belgium
Prof. Dr. Heike RAUER –  German Aerospace Centre (DLR) /Head of the Institute of Planetary Research (Freie Universität Berlin)

20:00 – 22:00 – The « Belgian Taste » Buffet.

The event will be followed by Belgian food and “TRAPPIST” beers (Walking dinner) :-)