In billions of years, will the Earth look like Mars? Astrophysicist Anjali Tripathi thinks it might, due to a process known as atmospheric escape. In this fascinating and accessible talk, Anjali discusses how the Earth is just one of many planets (Pluto, too) losing its atmosphere to space.

A Los Angeles native, Anjali Tripathi is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Astronomy department at Harvard University. With a passion for astrophysics, Anjali has done everything from working on Mars Rovers to analyzing computer simulations of colliding galaxies. She holds an S.B. in physics from MIT, and an M.Phil from Cambridge University, where she was a Marshall Scholar studying the size and structure of the Milky Way galaxy. Her current Ph.D. research explores how planets form and evolve. Using computer simulations, she has traced the 3D structure of planetary atmospheres that are shrinking due to evaporation. Anjali now focuses on birth, rather than death, by using radio antenna observations of dust around stars to understand the birth environments of planets.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx