Date : November, 9th      Time : Thursday, 4-5pm      Place : Seminar room: Science 103

Title : Extrasolar Planets and Astrobiology Research at UTA

Speaker : Dr. Manfred Cuntz, co-director of Astronomy at UTA

Affiliation : UT-Arlington

Abstract :

Since 1995 more than 200 planets around stars other than the Sun have been discovered with most of them roughly Jupiter mass or larger and nearly half of them in low eccentricity orbits relatively close to their host stars, i.e., at distances less than 0.25 AU. To date, no extrasolar terrestrial planets have been found, however, due to the inherent bias of the observational techniques. On the other hand, the existence of those planets is strongly implied both by theoretical and empirical arguments. In my talk, I will focus on new results concerning extrasolar planets and astrobiology. Emphasis will be placed on research results obtained at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). Research efforts at UTA include (1) orbital stability analyses of planets in stellar binary systems, (2) studies on planet-induced stellar activity enhancements, and (3) investigations on DNA damage in circumstellar environments due to UV-C radiation from stellar photospheres and chromospheres.

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