Carey Lisse

Dr. Carey Lisse is an astronomer studying the formation and evolution of solar systems, including our own, from their beginnings through the formation of life. With a background in chemistry, physics, and biology, he does this mainly through studying the clues left behind during their growth—the comets, asteroids, KBOs, gas, and dust left orbiting around stars as they age. An everyday example of this kind of archeo-astronomy work is our Moon, which is a relic of a giant impact on the growing Earth of a Mars-sized body ~4.4 Gyr ago, and its massively cratered surface, evidence for the Late Heavy Bombardment that occurred 600–800 Myrs later and may have brought the oceans and life-forming organics to Earth. Dr. Lisse is best known for his graduate work on the Nobel prize-winning Cosmic Background Explorer Mission that characterized the radiation from the Big Bang; his 1996 discovery of X-ray emissions from Comet Hyakutake and Carbon star LSF1 in 2001; his 2000s work studying comets as part of the Deep Impact mission; his work on the Comet ISON and Comet Siding Springs Observing Campaigns, including his exosystem detections of terrestrial planet formation in the HD 113766 star system, a giant planetary impact in the HD 172555 system, and a Late Heavy Bombardment in the Eta Corvi system; in the last decade, his observations of interstellar objects 1I/Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov; and, as a member of the New Horizons Pluto/MU69 flyby science team, for studying how Kuiper Belt objects formed in the infant solar system.