In the mid-1990s, the discovery of worlds beyond our solar system changed astronomy forever. At the time, Sara Seager was slogging through graduate school, unhappy and unsure she even wanted a career in science. She decided to go for broke and devote her career to the new exoplanets, even though some doubted they were even real.
Soon, she published pioneering papers exploring the likely atmospheres of these exotic worlds and how we might identify an Earth-like “twin.” Exoplanet research now turns up new wonders nearly every week, and in 2013 Seager won a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship for her discoveries.
Discover talked with Seager, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about what’s next in planet hunting.
Discover: What recent exoplanetary finds have amazed you?
Sarah Seager: The best thing that’s happened in the past year or so is the [large] number of potentially habitable planets that have been found. I grew up with this field, so for me it’s so thrilling. The entire field is just snowballing.
