Halmos Faculty Travels to UK for Astronomy Research

Over spring break, Halmos faculty member Stefan Kautsch, Ph.D. traveled to University of Warwick, United Kingdom to support the research projects of Kautsch and his student Kyle Hansotia, an undergraduate biology major working on a physics minor.

There Kautsch conducted research and held collaborative meetings at the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group. These meeting were with Prof. Dimitri Veras, one of world’s most experienced theoretical exoplanet researchers. They met in order to develop a strategy estimate the numbers of Earth-like and other planets in our galaxy and beyond.

The result of this collaboration may serve as input for the Drake equation to derive the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way. This is of particular interest to “Are We Alone?” initiatives such as Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, which aims to send a satellite to the Sun’s nearest stellar neighbor Alpha Centauri and has already accrued over $100,000,000 in funding.

The photo shows Kautsch in front of the Foucault Pendulum the entrance hall of the Physics Department at the University of Warwick. The pendulum was a revolutionary experiment which demonstrated that the Earth is a rotating body. The floor display around the pendulum shows famous equations in astronomy and physics.