Past Tuesday evening, March 3, the second talk of the lecture series that we are organising on occasion of IYA2009 took place in Leuven. The speaker was Professor Ewine van Dishoeck from the Sterrewacht Leiden in the Netherlands. The title of her talk was "From molecules to planets". Ewine is investigating the chemistry of interstellar clouds, out of which new stars and planetary systems are forming.
I didn't know Ewine personnaly before this presentation, nevertheless I have been told by a couple of people that she is not only an excellent scientist, but also a brilliant speaker. Possibly she is one of the most outstanding scientists of our time, at least in the field of astronomy. Accordingly, the audience numerously followed the invitation to her talk, the auditorium was overcrowded once again with about 230 people! By the way, the next talk of our series will be given by Ewine's husband, Prof. Tim de Zeeuw, current ESO director general. His talk will certainly take place in a larger auditorium!
Ewine concentrated in her talk on the immediate solar neighbourhood, i.e. about everything within the next 1000 lightyears. She dealt with the molecular clouds of our Milky Way Galaxy, which have orders of magnitude lower density of the best vacuum on Earth (~10000 particles per cubic centimetre) yet giving birth to new stellar systems, with the cemistry of these clouds (up to date about 130 different molecules have been identified in interstellar space), the formation of planets in gas and dust disks around young stars, the detection of planets around stars other than the sun (more than 300 such exoplanets have been found so far), and finally with the formation of life on these planets. Comets, which are something like the "remainder" of planet formation, probably play a major role in this last step, because in the bombardement by planetesimals of a young planet such as the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago, the heat largly destroys organic molecules. The comets and dust originating from them gently rain down onto the surface of the young planet later on, to replenish the seeds of life. Finally, the so-called panspermia theory, as well as observatories and instruments for the observation of the chemistry of interstellar clouds were discussed. A number of interesting questions of the audience rounded off the talk.
Here are some pictures of the lecture:
The talk was certainly in itself the best advertisement of the lecture series one can imagine. One may expect that next time there will be a comparably large audience. Fortunately, the larger auditorium is reserved already!
Read you soon,
Stefan
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