For our 34th lecture, we're raising a glass to the strangest worlds in the galaxy with Dr. Saugata Barat, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, whose research focuses on understanding what exoplanet atmospheres are made of.

In just three decades, what once belonged to science fiction has become science fact. Astronomers have discovered more than 6,000 planets orbiting stars beyond our Sun: lava worlds locked in eternal daylight, stormy gas giants with winds faster than a fighter jet, planets cloaked in glass-sand clouds, and teenage worlds shedding their atmospheres into space. In this session, titled "From Sci-Fi to Sci-Fact: Unravelling the Atmosphere of Exo-Worlds," Dr. Barat takes us across this vast and surprising exoplanet landscape, starting close to home with what our own solar system taught us about planet formation, moving on to how astronomers detect and study worlds they can never directly see, and how they decode the chemical fingerprints of distant atmospheres from faint starlight. He'll close with where the next generation of telescopes may finally find another Earth, and perhaps even a biosignature.

It's an evening where thought meets spirit, where the bar turns into a classroom, and the classroom feels like a conversation among friends.

What to Expect:

🔭 An engaging lecture on the discovery and atmospheres of exoplanets, followed by an open Q&A

🤝 A mixer with fellow curious minds after the talk

About the Speaker

Dr. Saugata Barat is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, researching the composition of exoplanet atmospheres. He studied physics at Presidency University, Kolkata, and completed his PhD at the University of Amsterdam (2024), studying young exoplanet atmospheres with Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope. He then held a postdoctoral position at MIT, studying small rocky planets, the most common planet type in our galaxy, before recently joining UT Austin as an independent fellow.

Disclaimer:

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