Achievement

In April 2012 the Astrobiology Science Conference (the most important in the world) was held in Atlanta and Trainee Aomawa Shields’s poster was selected as the very best student poster (of about 200). Her study examined the extent of ice on the surfaces of Earth-sized planets orbiting about different types of stars. Earth today of course has permanent sea-level ice only near its Poles, but there is good geological evidence that in the past Earth may have had low-latitude ice for extended periods. Stars cooler or hotter than the Sun can interact with their planets to cause excess warming (the greenhouse effect) or considerable cooling (“Snowball Earth”). Shields found that stars more massive and hotter than the sun may well also induce Snowball states in their planets, but low-mass stars probably do not induce Snowball states in any habitable planets.