{"id":258894,"date":"2025-11-12T17:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T17:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/258894\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T17:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T17:34:08","slug":"renowned-exoplanet-researcher-sara-seager-is-bringing-her-quest-to-find-another-earth-back-home-to-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/258894\/","title":{"rendered":"Renowned exoplanet researcher Sara Seager is bringing her quest to find another Earth back home to Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s no place like home. Unless, perhaps, your research involves finding a new home among the stars.<\/p>\n

But world-renowned exoplanet researcher Sara Seager says she’s excited to be returning to her terrestrial home of Canada, after leaving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to go back to her alma mater, the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n

Seager’s research includes searching for Earth 2.0 and life beyond Earth, even in inhospitable atmospheres like the clouds of Venus.<\/p>\n

After about 20 years at MIT, the U of T graduate says the timing was right for her return to Toronto, where she grew up. Her return also brings world-class research by a top scientist to Canada. <\/p>\n

\u201cCanada has always welcomed me, like the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. I’ve got a bunch of awards from Canada; I’m often invited just to come back and visit,\u201d Seager said. <\/p>\n

\u201c\u200b\u200bSo, I’ve kind of had this ongoing relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seager will join the university\u2019s Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) as professor in September 2026. <\/p>\n

She hopes to inspire the next generation of researchers \u2014 and she\u2019s bringing some incredible projects with her.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of my projects are coming with me to Canada,\u201d she said. \u201cIn addition, I hope to start new things.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s great news for CITA\u2019s director, Shantanu Basu, the man behind bringing Seager back to Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the visionary leadership that she shows in this field is what draws people in,\u201d Basu said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat draws in new people into the field and frankly helps us make the case with the people who fund the science, which is ultimately the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Life on Venus?<\/p>\n

One of Seager’s planned projects is a doozy: Looking for life in the clouds of Venus.<\/p>\n

In 2020, a paper co-authored by Seager<\/a> claimed to have found phosphine in the planet’s clouds. This chemical signature is produced on Earth by organisms that don\u2019t need oxygen to survive, and can be created in laboratories.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ANASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft took this photo of Venus during a flyby in 1974. (NASA)<\/p>\n

Excitement abounded at the thought that life could potentially exist on what is otherwise an extremely inhospitable planet, though the findings were questioned in follow-up research<\/a> by other scientists.<\/p>\n

But Seager and others want to know for sure. So along came Morning Star<\/a>, a project that aims to send missions to the second planet from the Sun early next decade. <\/p>\n

One mission consists of a balloon that would fly through Venus’s clouds and collect a sample from its atmosphere and then return it to Earth.<\/p>\n

Search for habitable worlds<\/p>\n

When Seager obtained her PhD from Harvard in 1994, only one exoplanet had been discovered. The second \u2014 orbiting a Sun-like star \u2014 was discovered in 1995.<\/p>\n

Now, more than 6,000 exoplanets have been confirmed. <\/p>\n

But thus far, no Earth-like exoplanet has been discovered. That\u2019s because they are difficult to detect, being relatively small and invisible to telescopes as they would be washed out by the light of their star.<\/p>\n

WATCH | Worlds are waiting to be found, NASA says:<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what led Seager to a passion project: Project Starshade<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This mission would involve a unique spacecraft with a shade to block out a star\u2019s light, potentially making it easier to detect an Earth-like planet. <\/p>\n

For now the project has been shelved, Seager said, but only temporarily.<\/p>\n

U.S. cuts an ‘opportunity’ for Canada: CITA<\/p>\n

Basu said he had long wanted to recruit Sara at CITA. <\/p>\n

“We always had this idea she might be, in the far distant future, somebody we might be able to attract and bring back to Canada,” he said. <\/p>\n

Then the Trump administration started cutting science programs<\/a>. <\/p>\n

“[We thought] hey, this could be an opportunity for Canada and Canadian science and research in general,” Basu said. <\/p>\n

“So, there was this idea that OK, maybe this is a good time to seek out people in the United States that we’ve always thought we might want to attract \u2026 [and] she is one of the most famous Canadian scientists who also happens to work abroad.”<\/p>\n

\"ASara Seager pictured in Hawaii, with the Mauna Kea observatories in the distance. (Charles Darrow)<\/p>\n

CITA doesn’t yet have a focus on exoplanet research, Basu said, which is why Seager’s arrival is so exciting.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur mission is to attract cutting-edge science and push the frontiers. And so, Sara, that is the definition of what she does,\u201d Basu said. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe’s been at the forefront of making predictions about what you would observe in exoplanetary systems and atmospheres.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seager’s research isn’t just about exoplanets. It’s about finding the right ingredients for life, so there is also lab work involved.<\/p>\n

\u201c[You\u2019re] definitely going to be seeing more exoplanets in Toronto. Let’s just say that,\u201d Seager said of her experiments.<\/p>\n

Basu said her interdisciplinary approach \u2014 “connecting exoplanetary science with organic chemistry and aerosols engineering” \u2014 is “very compelling.” <\/p>\n

“And that really is also part of CITA’s mission: to do theoretical astrophysics in a way that can make contact with other areas of astronomy and even beyond,” he added.<\/p>\n

For now, Seager is busy preparing to return to the very university whose campus she walked through on her way to high school. <\/p>\n

“When you’re thinking about a change in life, what better change is there than to go home?” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s no place like home. Unless, perhaps, your research involves finding a new home among the stars. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-258894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}