26-03-2019 20:00-22:00 - Urania Volksterrenwacht
Arianna Piccialli will talk about Exploring the atmospheres of terrestrial planets.
The three terrestrial planets - Venus, Earth, and Mars - formed from the same ingredients in the circumstellar disk at about the same moment. Still, they evolved very differently and today only Earth is habitable and compatible with life such as we know it. While on Earth we observe a temperate climate, Venus experienced a runaway greenhouse while Mars seems to have lost most of its atmosphere.
Understanding the main physical processes behind these different evolutionary paths is today more important than ever, both to understand the diversity of planets around other stars, and the future of climate on Earth.