Living Worlds

Rakiura Labs
Rakiura Labs
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  • Astronomy
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The search for planets that can stay alive. An exoplanet astrophysics group asking what makes a world habitable, and how small a planet can be while still holding liquid surface water. Led by Stanford Science Fellow Michelle Hill, the lab detects and catalogs planets in their stars' habitable zones and models the interior evolution, carbon cycling, and atmosphere retention that decide whether a world can stay alive. Have the skill but not the path into research? Rakiura puts you in a working lab, on a real problem picked by someone who knows what's tractable, with a group around you. Apply → https://www.rakiura.co

Episodes

  1. 9m ago

    S1E2: When the Map Is Wrong

    In 2013, a group of scientists sat down to redraw the habitable zone using better physics and better data, and when they finished, something unsettling had happened. Earth, our one confirmed living planet, was suddenly right at the edge. This episode is about what happens when a "settled" scientific concept gets unsettled. And about a second finding, hiding in the same recalculation, that quietly changed the question the field was really asking. Have the skill but not the path into research? Rakiura puts you in a working lab, on a real problem picked by someone who knows what's tractable, with a group around you. Apply → https://www.rakiura.co

  2. 9m ago

    S1E1: The Zone

    Three rocky planets orbit our Sun in the region where liquid water could exist, but only one of them is alive. For fifty years, astronomers have chased a single elegant idea about what makes a world habitable, a range of distances from a star where the temperature is just right. In this episode, we trace the "habitable zone" from a thought experiment to the calculation that still defines the field today, and find a warning hiding in plain sight. Even the scientists who built the concept knew it wasn't quite the answer everyone thinks it is. Have the skill but not the path into research? Rakiura puts you in a working lab, on a real problem picked by someone who knows what's tractable, with a group around you. Apply → https://www.rakiura.co

  • 2 Episodes

About

The search for planets that can stay alive. An exoplanet astrophysics group asking what makes a world habitable, and how small a planet can be while still holding liquid surface water. Led by Stanford Science Fellow Michelle Hill, the lab detects and catalogs planets in their stars' habitable zones and models the interior evolution, carbon cycling, and atmosphere retention that decide whether a world can stay alive. Have the skill but not the path into research? Rakiura puts you in a working lab, on a real problem picked by someone who knows what's tractable, with a group around you. Apply → https://www.rakiura.co

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