UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Exoplanets — planets beyond our solar system — were first identified in the 1990s and now number in the thousands. For exoplanets to support life they must lie in the “habitable zone,” the zone where conditions are capable of supporting life. Bradford Foley, associate professor of geosciences at Penn State, will discuss habitability conditions of exoplanets at 4 p.m. Monday, April 3, in 112 Walker Building at University Park and on Zoom.

Foley’s talk, "Planetary interior controls on the habitability of rocky exoplanets,” will address the links between an exoplanet’s interior dynamics and climate evolution, considering the role of its tectonic state, thermal evolution and area of exposed land.

Habitable zones are determined by the exoplanet’s distance from a star where they could be capable of having liquid water and thus sustaining life. An essential factor for the habitability is climate regulation via the carbonate-silicate cycle. Without such regulation, uninhabitably hot or cold climates can form, even for planets lying within their host star’s habitable zone. The planetary interior plays a critical role in driving the carbonate-silicate cycle, as it controls how volatiles are cycled between surface and interior over time.

Foley’s talk is part of the Penn State Earth and Environmental Systems Institute's spring 2023 EarthTalks speaker series, “Exploration of our Solar System.” We now live in the golden age of solar system exploration. With a dozen NASA missions currently in development — as well as spacecraft actively on Mars, near Jupiter and in the Kuiper belt — the current scale of mission activity is unprecedented and brings forth a new era of comparative study of varied worlds at the systems level. The series is intended to provide a venue for the expansion of participant’s horizons into our solar system.

The talk is free and open to the public. Talks also are available via Zoom. For more information about the spring 2023 series, visit the EarthTalks webpage.