Modern Star Trek: searching for new planets

From the moment Yuri Gagarin blasted into space in 1961, crewed spaceflight has captured the imagination of the world. Along with the massive technological advances required to make human spaceflight possible, crewed space missions have conducted a plethora of science experiments to advance the knowledge of humankind. Fields as diverse as biology, geophysics, medicine, and astronomy have benefited from experiments performed by astronauts in microgravity. I will summarise some of the most interesting science experiments that have taken place from the early days of the space race, through to cutting-edge research taking place today.

Exoplanet science has been a growing field since its inception, nearly 30 years ago and so far the planets we have managed to find do not look like the planets we have in our Solar System. Among these planets, the easiest to detect are a class of planets called Hot Jupiters and my work revolves around doing 3D atmosphere simulations of them. In this talk, I will be explaining how we go about modelling the atmospheres of these planets even though they are so far away and how we, as theorists, can produce “fake” observations to help observers which objects to investigate further or to test our theories against actual observations.