Distant Horizons:  New Worlds in an Age of Discovery

Larson, Shane

Title:

Distant Horizons: New Worlds in an Age of Discovery

dc.contributor.author	Larson, Shane
dc.contributor.corporatename	Georgia Institute of Technology. School of Physics	en_US
dc.contributor.corporatename	Northwestern University. Dept of Physics and Astronomy	en_US
dc.date.accessioned	2014-12-01T19:37:02Z
dc.date.available	2014-12-01T19:37:02Z
dc.date.issued	2014-11-18
dc.description	Presented on November 18, 2014 at 6:00 p.m. in the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commongs, Room 144.	en_US
dc.description	Shane Larson is a Research Associate Professor at Northwestern University in the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA), and also an astronomer in the Department of Astronomy at the Adler Planetarium.
dc.description	Runtime: 61:20 minutes
dc.description.abstract	Great voyages of exploration have always been driven in large part by an insatiable curiosity to know what is beyond the furthest horizon you can see. Five hundred years ago, the European exploration of the globe was a central feature of the expanding scientific and artistic explosion we call the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Today, we are once again witnessing an age of exploration and discovery, as we push beyond the shores of Earth, looking deep into the far reaches of space. You and I live in an age where, for the first time in human history, we are discovering and mapping alien worlds. Some of those worlds are not far from home, huddled around our own Sun but difficult to travel to. Some of those worlds are far across the Cosmos, spinning around other suns in other parts of the galaxy. For the first time in history, we are seeing and probing these worlds with the same age old questions in mind: Who are we? What is our place in the Cosmos? Are we alone? In this talk, we'll talk about this new age of discovery in our own Solar System, and how our understanding of the Solar System has changed over the past 40 years, during the first reconnaissance of the Worlds of the Sun. We'll preview the upcoming visit to Pluto, and use that as motivation to explore how the discovery of exoplanets around other stars is shaping our understanding of whether our home around the Sun is commonplace or unique in the catalogue of planetary systems.	en_US
dc.embargo.terms	null	en_US
dc.format.extent	61:20 minutes
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1853/52857
dc.language	English	en_US
dc.publisher	Georgia Institute of Technology	en_US
dc.relation.ispartofseries	Physics Public Lecture Series
dc.subject	Discovery	en_US
dc.subject	Exploration	en_US
dc.subject	Solar System	en_US
dc.title	Distant Horizons: New Worlds in an Age of Discovery	en_US
dc.type	Moving Image
dc.type.genre	Lecture
dspace.entity.type	Publication
local.relation.ispartofseries	School of Physics Public Lecture Series
relation.isSeriesOfPublication	f931f7b7-fef6-4b8f-b8a7-d8b64b5536bd