The Search for Other Earths

The discovery of a true Earth twin (an Earth-mass planet orbiting a Sun-like star within the habitable zone) has been a long-standing goal in the field of exoplanets, and advances in observational technology over the past decades have been moving us ever closer to achieving it. Modern extreme precision radial velocity (EPRV) spectrographs are carefully engineered to achieve measurement precisions at the cm/s level necessary for Earth twin detection. Even with this technology, many challenges stand in the way of finding Earths, ranging from the practicalities of survey design and execution to the "noisy" astrophysical processes that dominate the signals from stars we observe. In this talk, I'll give an overview of modern prospects for finding Earths through the radial velocity technique, highlighting the primary challenges and the places where progress is being made. I'll dive into some specific areas where interesting work is happening, including fundamental changes in the ways we calibrate instruments and new paradigms for modeling stellar physics in the full spectrum. I'll conclude with a look at what's to come for the field with next-generation dedicated Earth-finding surveys like the Terra Hunting Experiment.

Bio: Megan Bedell is an Research Scientist in the Exoplanets and Astrophysical Data and Surveys groups at the CCA. She works on high-precision spectroscopic measurements of exoplanetary systems and Sun-like stars throughout the Galaxy, with a particular focus on the connections between stars and the planets they host. She joined the foundation as a Flatiron Research Fellow in 2017 after earning her Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Chicago. (Credit: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/people/megan-bedell/)