Profs & Pints Baltimore: The Search for Life Beyond Earth

[Profs and Pints Baltimore](https://www.profsandpints.com/baltimore) presents: **“The Search for Life Beyond Earth,”** with Måns Holmberg, postdoctoral researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute and part of a team of astronomers looking for chemical traces of life on distant exoplanets. [Doors open at 5:30 and the talk starts at 6:30. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/life-beyond-earth2](https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/life-beyond-earth2) ] Are we alone in the universe? While many of us have pondered that question, astronomer Måns Holmberg of Baltimore’s Space Telescope Science Institute is seriously focused on answering it. Last year he was part of a Cambridge-led team of astronomers who generated worldwide headlines by announcing that they had discovered potential evidence of a gas produced almost exclusively by life in the James Webb Space Telescope’s data from the atmosphere of a distant world. Learn about the search for life elsewhere by coming to Baltimore’s [SOS Pickleball](https://www.sospickleball.com/), which has a bar and deli and will be reserved solely for this event, with no sounds of play. Dr. Holmberg will talk about how the search for life elsewhere is being conducted and what strides are being made on that front. He’ll describe what it would take to confirm signs of life on such a world, what challenges remain, and how the next wave of observations could ultimately tip the scales. Dr. Holmberg also will look at the role being played by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), how it uses infrared light to decode the chemical composition of strange atmospheres, and how it has left us closer than ever to answering the question of whether life exists elsewhere. He’ll discuss astronomers’ growing interest in a new class of exoplanets known as “Hycean worlds”—ocean-covered planets with hydrogen-rich atmospheres that could be…