What makes a planet habitable? - From life on Earth to life on extrasolar planets

Description: In the last 25 years we have found thousands of planets around other stars, but so far we were not able to detect life on any other body than Earth. After a short introduction to the diversity of extrasolar planets, I will try to shed some light on the fascinating research on the origin of life and answer some questions regarding the possibility of life on extrasolar planets: What does life need to start?

Which environments might be harmful to life?

What exotic conditions on a planet can we imagine that can still give rise to and host life?

Most importantly: How can we detect life on another planet?

About the speaker: Patrick Barth

Bio: Patrick Barth is a Ph.D. student at the University of St Andrews, currently working at the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. As a member of the St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science, Patrick is working on an interdisciplinary project trying to understand the role of lightning on the chemistry of the early Earth and other planets. He is particularly interested in whether lightning might have provided the building blocks for life or nutrients for the earliest forms of life on Earth and how we can detect the presence of lightning in the atmospheres of far-away exoplanets.