Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris's video: From Solar System Planets to Exoplanets: A new experience of the world in 21st century

IAP weekly specialised seminars / Friday 15 January 2021: Pierre Drossart, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (Paris, France) The explorers of the 17th and 18th centuries brought a new vision of the world through the scientific approach of measuring the world with new instruments: barometers, thermometers, telescopes, etc. This method largely contributed to the development of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. In the same approach, after the discovery of exoplanetary systems, we are now entering a phase of physical characterization which, after the indispensable phase of cataloguing, allows us to better understand and interpret the plurality of worlds. This seminar will place the current scientific questions of the understanding of exoplanets, and particularly of their atmospheres, in the perspective of the development of planetology since the beginning of the space age. By applying the Earth sciences of meteorology, geology, geochemistry and even biology to planets, astrophysicists have transformed them into pieces of Earth. This is the evolution that awaits the science of exoplanets in the coming decades. Examples of the questions but also of the pitfalls that have marked this exploration will be put into perspective, at the dawn of observations from large space and ground-based telescopes that will give us unequalled means of investigation.