Dark Matter Podcast | Germain Garreau & Kaustubh Hakim on exoplanets and extra-terrestrial life
17 May 2023: In this episode of the Dark Matter Podcast, join Germain Garreau and Kaustubh Hakim, two researchers who detect and study exoplanets \u2013 or planets that orbit a star outside our solar system. The podcast details their new techniques and nulling interferometry , which involves using several small telescopes instead of one large one. However, reaching near-perfect symmetry between the beams of each telescope is a challenge. The podcast also delves into how scientists today can infer the chemical composition of exoplanets from a distance and a question that has many in the scientific community entranced: can we use bio-markers like the detection of ozone to tell us whether there is life outside our solar system? \n\nGermain Garreau is an engineer in optics and photonics at Grenoble INP-Phelma (France) and KTH (Sweden), and a PhD student at the Institute of Astronomy of KU Leuven. His work on instrumentation is dedicated to pushing the limits of exoplanet\u2019s imaging and their characterisation using interferometry. Kaustubh Hakim is a Senior Researcher at KU Leuven and Royal Observatory of Belgium, who is currently building a new research team at the intersection of astronomy and geosciences to unravel mysteries surrounding exoplanets.