Science Under the Stars: Ice Dunes or Molten Hellscape?

Guest speaker Dr. Mariah MacDonald, The College of New Jersey, covers what it means for a planet to be habitable and how we can use the dynamics of planets to study their composition, formation, and evolution. Astrobiology seeks to understand how planets can support life and seeks to constrain the frequency of habitable planets. Current estimates suggest that nearly 10% of Sun-like stars host rocky planets in their habitable zones and that the Milky Way alone hosts an average of 0.35 Earth-like planets per star.