Dr. Jessica Spake will speak to the Optimist Club via Zoom at the November 19 meeting.
If you want to find out if there’s life out there . . .and have fun in the process, come to the Palisades Optimist Club Meeting on Tuesday, November 19, Janes Hall located at the Palisades Presbyterian Church, 15821 Sunset Boulevard.
The speaker will be Dr. Jessica Spake, via Zoom, who will present a 30-minute program followed by a Q&A session to discuss “Is There Life Out There?”
Spake is college graduate from the United Kingdom, who received her PhD from the University of Exeter. She worked at Caltech before moving to Carnegie Observatories this September as the newest staff scientist. While working on her doctorate, she made the first detection of helium in an escaping exoplanet atmosphere. This marked a new way to observe elusive mass-loss processes in action.
The eventual goal of Spake’s research is to predict which exoplanets, around which stars, can maintain habitable atmospheres for billions of years.
In 1995 the first planet was found orbiting another star beyond our Sun – a so-called exoplanet. Since then, astronomers have been unveiling the strange atmospheres of exoplanets with telescopes like Hubble and the new James Webb Space telescope. Planets like nothing scientists had imagined are changing our understanding of our place in the cosmos.
The doctor will explain why understanding the atmospheres of these alien worlds remains key in the search for life elsewhere in the Universe.
Visitors and perspective Optimist club members are welcome to attend. The doors open at 9:30 a.m., with coffee served. Food is served starting at 9:45 a.m. and the meeting starts at 10 a.m.
For those attending, there is free parking, but please park in spaces nearest the church (Sunset Boulevard), to assure the preschool drop-off area is safe and available to parents.