Rising star in astronomy: Howard Chen

When Howard Chen was a teen, he found Carl Sagan’s traditional guide Pale Blue Dot (Random Home, 1994), a rumination on humanity and its lonely, fragile planetary residence.

“I liked spending time on the library and, out of likelihood, I discovered this guide that modified my perspective of our place within the universe,” says Chen.

Now 29, Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and spent his early years in Burnaby, British Columbia, earlier than shifting to the U.S. for highschool. He studied artistic writing throughout his first yr at Boston College, however switched to physics the subsequent yr after taking an astronomy class. Within the new program, Chen acquired to expertise the very best of each worlds: being artistic and studying about science.

“I thrived in an surroundings the place I might ask large, daring inquiries to try to work out solutions utilizing the instruments and strategies of science,” he says.
Chen went on to finish his Ph.D. at Northwestern College, specializing in planetary science. He’s at the moment a postdoctoral program fellow at NASA Goddard House Flight Middle, the place he focuses his analysis on the atmospheres of exoplanets.

“I actually get pleasure from pushing our limits to grasp the atmospheres of smaller, rocky exoplanets which can be throughout the liveable zone,” he says. These worlds, the place liquid water might exist on the floor, are the apparent locations to hunt for indicators of life-friendly circumstances and even life itself.

Chen makes use of pc simulations to foretell the evolution and composition of such exoplanetary atmospheres. His work focuses on incorporating chemical reactions that happen between a number star’s gentle and a planet’s ambiance into local weather fashions, one thing that hasn’t historically been executed. These reactions play an vital position in figuring out which gases, and the way a lot of every, are current within the ambiance of an exoplanet. “Every gasoline may give us some clue of the local weather evolution and the present state of the planet,” says Chen.

He anticipates that this, in flip, will assist him reply large questions, resembling whether or not water may very well be current on the floor of Earth-like planets, and if there are potential biosignatures that point out the presence of life.

“I’m hoping my work will enable us to have the ability to constantly predict the atmospheric composition of terrestrial exoplanets and to check this to what we would be capable of finally observe utilizing telescopes,” says Chen.

Daniel Horton, a local weather scientist and Earth system modeler at Northwestern College who was Chen’s thesis advisor, says, “Howard’s drive, independence, and creativity recommend he will probably be a pioneer within the planetary habitability analysis group for years to come back.”

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