The Hunt for Another Earth

The new Kepler spaceborn telescope is hunting for Earth-size planets, with hundreds in its sights. Kepler has already found definitively rocky planets, like Earth, and is now hunting for habitable ones. This talk will present
up-to-the-minute results from the Kepler Team. Biologists are working with astronomers to assess the environmental conditions necessary for life, especially intelligent life, on planets elsewhere in the universe.

Speaker Biography

Dr Geoff Marcy is currently Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, famous for discovering more extrasolar planets than anyone else, 70 out of the first 100 to be discovered, along with R. Paul Butler and Debra Fischer.

Marcy graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude with a double major in physics and astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1976. He then completed a Doctor of Philosophy in Astrophysics and Astronomy in 1982 at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

He has held teaching positions, first at the Carnegie
Institution of Washington as a Carnegie Fellow from 1982 to 1984. Marcy then worked as an Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy from 1984 to 1996 and then as a Distinguished University Professor from 1997 to 1999 at
the San Francisco State University. He is currently an Adjunct Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the San
Francisco State University and a Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley and the Director of Center for Integrative Planetary Science.

Marcy has published numerous articles, and has been named one of Newsweek's 100 Americans for the Next Century. His work has been recognized with many distinguished awards, including the UCLA Alumni Professional Achievement Award.   He has been covered by the New York Times and has appeared on television, newsmagazines and science shows, from PBS's NOVA and BBC Television to ABC's Nightline, CBS's Nightly News and NBC's Today Show.