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Title: Characteristics and Habitability of Super Earths List of Organizers: Professor Frederic Rasio [email protected] Nort

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Title: Characteristics and Habitability of Super Earths List of Organizers: Professor Frederic Rasio Rasio@Northwestern.Edu Nort Title: Characteristics and Habitability of Super Earths List of organizers: Professor Frederic Rasio [email protected] Northwestern University Dept of Physics & Astronomy 2145 Sheridan Rd Evanston IL 60208-0834 office: +1 847 467 3419 secretary: +1 847 491 7650 lab: +1 847 491 7904 fax: +1 847 467 6857 Dr. Eric Ford [email protected] Mail Stop 51, Room B-216 Center for Astrophysics 60 Garden Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel. 617-496-7908 Fax. 617-495-7093 Professor Sara Seager [email protected] Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Department of Physics Massachusetts Institute of Technology 54-1626 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139 tel. 617-253-6775 fax. 617-253-8298 Contact person who will be available for consultation: Fred Rasio Person responsible for working to ensure diversity in the group of people who apply to participate in the workshop: Fred Rasio. All organizers (Fred Rasio, Eric Ford, and Sara Seager) have read and approved the submitted proposal. Preferred weeks for the workshop. A three-week workshop is requested during the time period July 28 through August 29. Any dates within this time period are acceptable; other dates are impossible. This choice is due to the availability of the organizers. There are no conflicts with national or international meetings or workshops during this time. Description and Justification Over 240 extrasolar planets are known to orbit nearby stars. Close to fifteen of these are low-mass exoplanets with minimum masses ranging from 5 to 20 Earth masses. These “super Earths” are the first known exoplanets that likely consist substantially of rock, making them analogs of the terrestrial planets that support life in our solar system. A substantial number of super Earths are expected to be discovered in the next year by ground-based radial velocity planet searches for rocky planets and with the COROT Space Telescope that aims to find transiting super Earths. The summer of 2008 will therefore be a critical time to study and explain the super Earths’ dynamical and physical characteristics as they relate to planet habitability. For example, half of the super Earths have eccentricities between 0.1 and 0.2. What causes this eccentricity? How much resulting tidal energy is generated and how much of it reaches the planet’s surface? Do the super Earths have atmospheres or have their atmospheres been evaporated by the parent star? Can we observe their atmospheres, and what atmospheric compositions would be indicative of life? We propose a workshop to focus issues related to habitability of known super Earths. The proposed workshop would have a focus on both astrophysics and astrobiology of super Earths. Possible Participants Fred Adams (Univ of Michigan) Eric Agol (Univ of Washington) Isabelle Baraffe (Ecole Normale Superieure) Travis Barman (Lowell Observatory) Gilles Chabrier (Ecole Normale Superieure) Drake Deming (NASA/Goddard) Jean-Michel Désert (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris) Ian Dobbs-Dixon (UCSC) Anne Eggenberger (Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Grenoble) Michael Endl (McDonald Observatory) Debra Fischer (SFSU) Eric Ford (Harvard Univ) Jonathan Fortney (NASA Ames) Thierry Forveille (Observatoire de Grenoble) Scott Gaudi (Ohio State Univ) Nader Haghighipour (Univ of Hawaii) Artie Hatzes (Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg) Christiane Helling (Univ of St Andrews) Shigeru Ida (Tokyo Institute of Technology) Mike Jura (UCLA) Heather Knutson (Harvard Univ) Marc Kuchner (NASA/Goddard) Dave Latham (Harvard Univ) Alain Lecavelier (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris) Victoria Meadows Kristen Menou (Columbia Univ) Thomas Penz (INAF - Osservatoria Astronomico di Palermo) Eric Pfahl (UCSB) Frederic Pont (Geneva Observatory) Elisa Quintana (NASA Ames) Andreas Quirrenbach (Landessternwarte Heidelberg) Fred Rasio (Northwestern Univ) Dimitar Sasselov (Harvard Univ) Bun'ei Sato (Okayama Astrophysical Observatory) Steinn Sigurdsson (Penn State) Angelle Tanner (NASA/JPL) Caroline Terquem (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris) Ed Thommes (Northwestern Univ) Giovanna Tinetti (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris) Wesley Traub (NASA/JPL) Diana Valencia (Harvard Univ) Josh Winn (MIT) Nick Woolf .
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