Tue, May 21, 2013 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM See description. FREE. Water is important to all of us, but it has recently become
especially exciting to astronomers hunting for alien worlds.
We are now finding planets that orbit in the "habitable zones"
around their parent stars. In astro-exoplanetary-science-speak,
"habitable zone" translates as "the range of distances from a
star where the temperature at a planet's surface is between 0
and 100 C." Think of it as a Goldilocks zone, where the planet
is not too hot, not too cold, but "just right" for liquid water
oceans to exist.
Water alone doesn't equal life. But "no water" equals "no life"
as we know it. That equation applies not just on alien worlds,
but on our home world as well. We can't experiment with the
global environment (or at least we shouldn't) and astronomers
can't experiment with conditions on other planets. But we're
finding planets with conditions that astound even science
fiction writers. Those extreme alien environments will help us
refine models of how the Earth responds to change.
How do we search for exoplanets and what have we found so far?
What can you expect in the next few years... indeed, in the next
few months? What lessons can a student of global sustainability
learn from a rocket scientist? Listen to an astrophysicist
grapple with these questions and hear his answers on Tuesday,
21 May at 6:30 pm. Round House Community Center (181 Roundhouse Mews (Corner of Davie & Pacific)
Vancouver, BC V6Z 2W3)
UBC Prof. Matthews is a world-leading expert in the fields of stellar seismology (literally using the surface vibrations of vibrating stars to probe their hidden interiors and histories), exoplanetary science, and astronomical instrumentation and time series analysis. In 2006, Prof. Matthews was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada, and in 2012, he received a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. 
In addition to heading the MOST Mission, Prof. Matthews serves on the Science Team for BRITE Constellation (BRIght Target Explorer) – a Canadian–Austrian–Polish space satellite mission to monitor the brightest stars in the night sky. He is a member of the Executive Council for NASA’s Kepler space satellite mission hunting for Earth-sized exoplanets in the Habitable Zones of their parent stars.