Annual Physics Schools Lecture: New worlds in our galaxy

Are you a GCSE or A-Level student interested in physics? Join us here at King's for our annual physics schools lecture! Professor Giovanna Tinetti will be taking us on a voyage into her ground-breaking research hunting for exoplanets.

Talk description
The Earth is special to us – it’s our home. But is it really special as a planet? Every star we can see in the night sky is likely to be orbited by planets. There are probably a thousand billion planets in our galaxy alone.

In about thirty years, over 6000 “exoplanets” have been discovered. Some of them are freezing cold, some are so hot that their surface is molten. But beyond that our knowledge falters: What are they made of? How did they form? What’s the weather like there? Are they habitable?

The Ariel Space Telescope, to be launched in 2031 as part of the European Space Agency Science Programme, is the first mission dedicated to the determination of the chemical composition of hundreds of exoplanets. Finding out why are these new worlds as they are and what is the Earth’s place in the universe is one of the key challenges of astrophysics, and Ariel will bring a fundamental contribution to addressing this challenge.

About the Speaker

Professor Giovanna Tinetti is Vice Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences, King’s College London. Professor Tinetti is the Principal Investigator of the European Space Agency’s Ariel - the only space telescope undertaking a comprehensive survey of exoplanets in a wide variety of environments, which will launch in 2029. She is co-founder and co-director of the London Centre for Space Exochemistry Data. She is also co-founder and co-director of Blue Skies Space Ltd, which is developing a new class of satellites to provide high-quality data to the global scientific community.

Giovanna has a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Turin. During her career she has worked at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris, and was the ‘Enrico Fermi’ Chair at La Sapienza, University of Rome. She joined UCL in 2007 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow and she has progressed her career there as Professor of Astrophysics and Head of Astrophysics Group.

Additional information

This event is aimed at those aged 16+. Younger attendees are welcome, but please note that attendees under the age of 14 must be accompanied by a responsible adult. For school groups, tickets are limited to 20 students per booking, to ensure a larger number of schools can attend. If you are aged 14–18 and booking for yourself, please check with a parent or guardian before booking your place.

Registration for this event will take place in reception in the main Strand Building entrance. This is on the Strand, the opposite side of St Mary Le Strand Church from Bush House. Refreshments will be served in the Engineering Quad Labs and the Lecture will take place in the Edmond J. Safra Lecture Theatre.

This event is organised by the Department of Physics at King’s College London, together with the Faculty Outreach Team. If you have any questions or would like any further details, please email nmes-outreach@kcl.ac.uk.