The revolution in finding habitable exoplanets

This satellite will change everything. The field of exoplanets is about to undergo a revolution.

The Gaia spacecraft is going to release new data never before seen that is going to find more exoplanets than ever before. In this video guest star Sam Ryan - a PhD student at the University of Cambridge - takes you through the past, present and future of exoplanet research.

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Some stock footage courtesy of Getty.
Edited by Luke Negus.

A revolution is coming in the race to find habitable exoplanets: planets around other stars. In this video, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge interviews professors including Lord Martin Rees about the past, present, and future of exoplanets. Are we alone in the universe? Are there habitable planets around other stars? How do we detect exoplanets? And what is the Gaia satellite? All this and more answered in this video essay about habitable exoplanets.

Huge thanks to my supporters on Patreon: Adam Scott, Anna Morris, Felix Winkler, CC, Rebecca Rivers, Thomas Charbonnel, Mark Moore, Philipp Legner, Zoey O'Neill, Veronica Castello-Vooght, Heijde, Paul H and Linda L, Marcus Bosshard, Liat Khitman, Dan Sherman, Matthew Powell, Adrian Sand, Dan Nelson, The Cairene on Caffeine, Cody VanZandt, Igor Francetic, Daniel Irwin, bitreign33 , Thusto , Andy Hartley, Lachlan Woods, Dan Hanvey, Andrea De Mezzo.

Tingus Pingus from Lativia, Mathias Hüttenmüller, RomanConsul, Ave Jonathan Cahyadi, John Bate, Diaffixx , Kevin Gillard, Chris Conrey, Christian Weckner, Frida Sørensen, Ned Funnell, Aleksa Stankovic, Meagan, Indira Pranabudi, Chaotic Brain Person, Simon H., Julian Mendiola, Ben Cooper, Mark Injerd, dryfrog, Justin Warren, Angela Flierman, Alipasha Sadri, Calum Storey, Mattophobia, Riz, The Confusled, Simon Stelling, Gabriele Siino, Bjorn Bakker, Ieuan Williams, Tom Malcolm, GordonV47, Leonard Neamtu, Brady Johnston, Louise K., Rapssack, Kevin O'Connor, Timo Kerremans, Thomas Rintoul, Lars Hubacher, Ashley Wilkins, Samuel Baumgartner, ST0RMW1NG 1, Morten Engsvang, Cio Cio San, Farsight101, Haris Karimjee, K.L, fourthdwarf, Stormchaser007 , Sam Ryan, Felix Freiberger, Chris Field, ChemMentat, Kolbrandr, Vinni, Shane O'Brien, Alex, Fujia Li, Jesper Koed, Jonathan Craske, Albrecht Striffler, Jack Troup, Sven Ebel, Sean Richards, Kedar , Alastair Fortune, Mat Allen, Krisztián Török, Colin J. Brown, Mach_D, Keegan Amrine, Simon Donkers, Kodzo , James Bridges, Liam , Wendover Productions, Kendra Johnson.

[JimtheEvo]

I wonder where this video was filmed. My guess is Oxford but there’s no way to know.

[OzoneTheLynx]

Gaia is an insanely impactful Mission (>2.5 Papers a day on average) which sadly doesn't get talked about much. Also Sam did a great job!

[pjk]

Im coming back to this video to share with a friend and im super sad to see it at only 7.7k views. This was one of the most profoundly exciting and hopeful videos ive seen in a while! Can't wait to see all the discoveries that come from this!

[anna_in_aotearoa]

The scale of the data being sourced by modern astro missions like Gaia really is pretty mind-boggling! 😳 But it's exciting the field is still so alive and our understanding of our macro-world is still so constantly changing, as new info becomes available. Love Gaia's open-source approach, seems like a truly global collab in learning more about the universe! 👏

[anyaakovalchuk]

Its so interesting to hear different academics talk about topics they're passionate about!

[wastucar]

❤😊 thank you for taking over for Simon!

[samuelschonenberger]

Wierdly enough this Tuesday, I was at a guest lecture from Prof Queloz, one of the guys, who first observed an exoplanet and won a nobel prize at my University, but since he is at Cambridge you are probably familiar with him but it's funny timing
Edit: his paper showed up on screen

[kendrajohnson]

Very exciting video - thank you Sam! The part where Martin Rees said if he doesn't want to talk to people he tells them he is a mathematician made me laugh! :)

[abody]

Really cool to see there's a diverse population of participants in this important field of science. Nice work.

[thebrahmnicboy]

I would love to see the retention graph on these videos. I recently saw Tom Scott's video on how retention drops when experts speak on a topic as opposed to the host, and how that affects science communication.

[NicolasUnger]

I felt the video was a bit flat. It was supposed to be about Gaia and exoplanets, and the information given about it was very superficial, only mentioning what Gaia will be able to do and no actual results. The only specific results were about K2-18b which not only isn't about Gaia, but talks about techniques that Gaia isn't even capable of doing. I was part of the recent exoplanet validation paper for Gaia DR3 (Holl et al. 2023), where we found the first exoplanets using Gaia astrometry, yet it wasn't even mentioned.

[patrickavis]

Great video and really enjoyable....the channel is in safe hands!

[Morgead]

I heard that in classification of stars the class of "G" is "good" like our Sun is more likely to have exoplanets in their habitable zone, exoplanets around red dwarfs are likely fixed in their rotation and red dwarfs emit different radiation like microwaves ( proxima centauri).

[Kie-]

10:40 OMG that's the holy grail of exo planetary study as far as I'm concerned, knowing there are planets there is one thing, being able to analyze light coming from them is massive. I want to know how precisely we can measure this light - can we infer chemical make-up kind of thing?

[andyhartley]

Hands up who thought Samwise already came from another planet! ✋

[edwarddunne]

You can also figure out the speed of sound by getting drunk in a field in the middle of France.

[nemoevr]

We need more handsome and articulated science communicators in the world, and I mean hundreds to counter the sad influence of the misinformation usually found online.

[Tony-dprl]

Finding them is one thing ... reaching them is something we don't even have a theoretical plan for.

[martiancolonist]

Discussing the K2-18b spectrum as evidence of biosignatures is misleading, given the DMS 'signal' doesn't pass standard statistical tests for a detection.

[disaster_chief]

hmm yes this data will be very useful in my next playthrough of starfield