Principal Investigator Sara Seager
The goal in studying exoplanet interiors is to learn what individual exoplanets are made of, and even what their internal structure might be. Professor Seager’s work has focused on the mass-radius relationships for exoplanets of a wide range of compositions and masses. Prof. Seager and colleagues. Exoplanet researchers have realized that there are fatal limitations to uncovering the interior composition of an exoplanet because only the mass and radius can be measured -- no other information about the interior. This deadlock can be slightly aided in the future when enough exoplanets are found to do statistics, or possibly when molecules can be detected in super-Earth atmospheres in the future.