Deep Talk: Stars, Planets and the Powerful Play

Looking up to the night sky triggers a flood of feelings often difficult to describe with words. Almost every woman and every man who ever walked this planet lost themselves, at some point, in the infinite loop of self-awareness provided by the starry black mirror of the night. But humanity didn't just passively stand in awe. Building on what it learned on the surface of its planet, humankind went searching for answers using the tools of science and technology.
In the last hundred years, this search disclosed a new view of the cosmos. We now know the night sky is just a porthole to the immense ocean of space and time that is the Universe.
We sail on a tiny planet surrounding a common star, our Sun, that is only one out of billions of stars just in our own Galaxy. By answering the question "What makes stars shine?" we also found out where the bricks of life come from, and we are now ready to tackle the next big question: "Are we the only audience of this powerful play?"

Links to the movies:
- Crab Supernova Explosion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tth9G90IkWY
- Zooming into The Large Magellanic Cloud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIrUv1PzRQM
- Zooming into the Pillars of Creation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3t_gjuXWk

Transcript

1. Matteo Cantiello Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute Department of Astronomy, Princeton University Authorea DEEP TALKS STARS, PLANETS AND THE POWERFUL PLAY Credits: Florian Breuer
2. Credits: Max Seigal
3. Solar Dynamics Observatory (NASA) Earth
4. Stars do shine because of thermonuclear reactions
5. Solar Dynamics Observatory (NASA)
6. Stars do not live forever
7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tth9G90IkWY
8. Stars live... (for million/billions of years) and die (Some explode as Supernovae) They release some of their content in space Stars: Life and Death
9. Orion Nebula (M42) Stars: Life from Death
10. Credits: Florian Breuer
11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIrUv1PzRQM
12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3t_gjuXWk
13. How far is far?
14. Credits: NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI NEW HORIZONS
15. Credits: Southwest Research Institute (Dan Durda)/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (Ken Moscati) NEW HORIZONS Mission to Pluto. The fastest spacecraft to leave Earth
16. Manhattan
17. The fastest spacecraft to leave Earth 31000 miles/hr 3 billion miles 9.5 years to reach Pluto
18. The fastest spacecraft to leave Earth 31000 miles/hr 3 billion miles 9.5 years to reach Pluto How long it would take to reach the closest star?
19. At its current speed, 50 000+ years away from the closest star Proxima Cen (4.2 ly) Proxima Cen 1/5000 of the trip The closest star 1 ly ~ 6000 billion miles 50 000 Years
20. Source: http://www.sflorg.com/spacenews/images/imsn091908_01_02.jpg The Solar Neighborhood 120 Million Years 12 MillionYears traveling at 31000 miles/hour
21. 100 000 Light Years ★ 300 billions of stars Our Galaxy: The Milky Way 1.2 Billion Years traveling at 31000 miles/hour
22. Closest Galaxy: Andromeda 2.5 Million Light Years 30 Billion Years for New Horizon
23. Life in the Universe
24. How to look for Exoplanets? Exoplanets are small, far and do not shine. Till mid 90’s, no exoplanets known
26. A revolution: The Kepler Satellite
27. Looking at 100 000 stars
28. A revolution: Kepler discovered thousands of exoplanets!
29. 1 Exoplanet per Star!
30. Habitable Zone
31. 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have a Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone (Petigura et al. 2013) Potentially habitable planets seem to be common How rare are Earth-like planets?
32. How many habitable planets in the Universe?
33. 2 500 000 l.y. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech 300 000 000 000 Stars
34. Credits: NASA
35. Credit: NASA Credits: NASA/ESA
36. Credit: NASA
37. Credit: NASA, Hubble Ultra Deep Field
38. 5000 galaxies 20 000 000 across the sky 100 000 000 000 galaxies
39. 300 000 000 000 stars 100 000 000 000 galxs
40. 30 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 stars
41. 30 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 planets
42. 6 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 potentially habitable planets
43. Rule of thumb: about 100 habitable planets for every grain of sand on Earth
44. Things have been around for quite a while...
45. Solar Dynamics Observatory (NASA) Earth About 100 habitable planets for every grain of sand on Earth. Been there for billion of years.
46. The night sky is just a porthole to the immense ocean of space and time that is the Universe. We sail on a tiny planet surrounding a common star, our Sun, that is only one out of hundreds billions of stars just in our own galaxy, the Milky-Way. On average, every star in the Milky-Way hosts a planet. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, so the total number of stars and planets in our universe exceeds the number of grains of sand on Earth. Planets similar to the Earth (aka habitable) might be extremely common (~20%)