Niyati Desai - Three Minute Thesis - 4/25/2023

directly at a star they're Blinded By Its light this is because stars are about 10 billion times brighter than the planets themselves if the light from a planet was one single drop of water the light from the star is enough drops of water to fill this entire room today 98 of all the exoplanets that we know about we found by looking at the stars and noticing

the wobble or dip in their brightness not from looking at the planets directly that's where I come in I'm an exoplanet real estate agent specializing in Just Right planets I've got a special telescope that lets me see plants that others cannot my telescope instruments block the light from the Star and allow me to directly image the planets these images are the only way to determine the

surface temperatures and atmospheres of the planets to see if they're too hot too cold or just right I'm trying to help the Goldilocks is to find a new home and to give them the most options to choose from I still need to perfect my telescope for that I need two things the first is one of these rainbow screens that blocks the light from the star the

second is one of these bendy mirrors to help Focus all the Starlight perfectly on the screen so only the planet light can get through thousands of small actuators behind my mirror poke it to change its shape for each different star that I look at and finding these optimal shapes is something that I'm still working on but eventually one day I want to be able to ask

Mira mirror not on the wall which planet is the most habitable of them all okay but back to the goldilocks's so to characterize a planet's surface to see if it's too hot or too cold I need to get an image in full color I've been working on designing my screen so it can block the light from the Star and do so at several wavelengths so far

I've managed to cover the red wavelengths but I need to cover more of the spectrum I've been trying interesting designs like the spiral staircase and pinwheel patterns but that's not all so let's talk about Galactic real estate for a second in case you forgot the three most important rules of choosing a new home they are location location and location and that is my final challenge you

see there are already several planets that we can see but those are all much farther away from their Stars Just Right planets where the Goldilocks might actually want to live are much closer into their stars but those are the hardest to see so my goal is to design my telescope so I can take full color pictures of planets uh full color pictures of planets for uh

planets that are close by to Bright Stars much like the Goldilocks I've been searching for the just right combination of screen design and bendy mirror shape and once my instrument upgrades are complete I might even be able to help one of you find a new home is anyone out there looking for a new planet to live on