Cosmic Forecast: From Northern Lights to Alien Storms

The Northern Lights (aka aurorae) have fascinated people for millennia. This talk will look at aurorae on Earth, on planets in the solar system and on worlds further beyond and what we can learn from them.

Space weather describes the constant stream of material and radiation emitted by the Sun that can adversely affect the Earth, potentially destroying electronics and communication systems, among others. My work focuses on trying to predict and better understand space weather to try and mitigate its effects.

What’s the weather like on other worlds? I study storms and clouds on distant, planet-like objects beyond our Solar System to understand how alien atmospheres work.

Rocks are everywhere but our knowledge of what structures they present within themselves is very limited. Some of them have survived for billions of years and can act as time machines to bring us back to 3.5 billion years ago and tell us stories of our planet. They are a record of the environment, atmosphere, temperature, pH and, eventually, life and its origins. We use prebiotic organic molecules that would have been present on early Earth and study what structures they form in our lab-made time machines. So, let’s go back in time and see what happened!