The Quest for Earth 2.0: Discovering Exoplanets by Suppressing Starlight

Seeing an Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star isn't possible with current telescopes. The difference in brightness is just too big. But future space telescopes will have multiple tricks up their sleeve specifically for that. Which ones? Finding out in this interview.

🟣 Guest: Dr Bertrand Mennesson

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00:00 Intro
01:16 Resolving Earth-size world around a Sun-like star
08:13 Coronagraphs and Adaptive optics
21:10 Other ideas
34:59 Nulling
39:00 Nancy Grace Roman
43:19 Unlimited budget telescope
49:58 Current obsessions
53:33 Final thoughts

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

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[Wolf-Spirit_Alpha-Sigma]

Loved this interview! He has a very good English, strong French accent, and is very smart. Perfect.

[richardmarkham]

Another great interview. These can never be too long or too technical! Bertrand was brilliant.

[BlazinWolf]

Fraser dropping Knowledge Bombs! I certainly appreciate your insight and attention to detail 👍I become smarter through osmosis by watching your vids. Lol

[Martin_Hermann]

NASA - Never a straight answer. Fascinating interview, Fraser!

[Robbadobbsoldier]

Great video Fraser. I hope you are having a great summer

[Starman_]

Another great interview. Thank you both.
🤘😎🤘

[johnmackay]

Another great Interview.

Thanks Fraser.

[acmelka]

Thanks for this video. I keep seeing comments and content that appears to assume we currently have the capability to detect earth-like planets around sun-like stars. Many of the 'Fermi Paradox' solutions that opine on the fantastic rarity of Earth just ignore the fact we have a sample of one on which to base our science

[Selwyndrea]

Amazing! You see what happens when people unite

[SpongeBob-DK]

Great interview - really informative. Thx

[zakeller]

This was marvelous in the depth with which you talked through the details.

My answer for what do you do if money is no object: all of the above in the biggest way possible… physically. Do an independent system with each one of these leading technologies. Specifically for the star shade concept, a few central telescopes in a Dyson-swarm-like cloud of mobile star shades, so repositioning doesn’t take nearly so long, and there’s redundancy against hardware failures and fuel limitations.

[uniontank]

I love ya Fraser. Thank you for your work.

[franciscooyarzun]

Would it be of use to send a coronagraph into geostationary orbit,
that a ground telescope could look at (around), and the satellite had a
“gentle nudge” mechanism?

[ChrisNelson-iqnt]

How important is the thea collision which created our moon to the Advent of life on earth? Is it possible that such an unlikely event could explain the great silence we find when looking for life on other worlds?

[mrwolsy]

We gotta get a solar sail going soon and do a Voyager flyby of Trappist or Proxima Centaury.

[bobjackson]

I was excited to hear this video. I'm interested in habitable water / rocky exoplanets, so this was very inforamative.

[mm-dwrr]

Where's Prof Kipping when you need him?

[gary]

At the pace of technological advance it must be very frustrating to plan a project 10-15 yrs out.

[hughmccracken]

Could there be advantages in positioning the Giant segmented screen and telescope in the moons shadow to remove solar heating effects?

[PhonicallyPsychotic]

what about using perspective, instead of 1 large star shade send 5, 10 etc smaller shades but space them out overlapping