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MSU Professor Explores The Heavens to Find the Next Earth

NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

  For the last decade or so, it has become apparent that planets are not specific to our solar system, but instead are as common as the stars. 

Dr. Peter Plavchan, an astronomer from Missouri State University, talks about his own research into the burgeoning field of exoplanets.  During the past five years, Dr. Plavchan has been working to locate and characterize these planets, and in so doing answer the bigger question of the likelihood of another earth. 

As Dr. Plavchan puts it, “Over the last twenty-five years, we’ve been turning the fiction of that question into fact.”  In this spot, he discusses recent developments and describes the methods for finding and understanding distant planets. 

Dr. David Cornelison has been working as an educator and scientist in Arizona and Missouri universities for the last 32 years. From 2010-2018, he was the head of the Department of Physics, Astronomy and Materials Science at Missouri State University. His research interests lie at the intersection of experimental condensed-matter physics and astrophysics, while his educational efforts have focused on outreach to the K-12 school system. Most of all, he believes in curiosity-driven learning in the sciences and all other fields.