We've been looking forward to sharing this one with you... Last year, we started thinking about what it would take to detect mountains, valleys and volcanoes - surface topography - on an exoplanet. It seemed like a crazy idea at the time but we decided to make the calculation for fun and were surprised that it may actually be feasible in the not too distant future. Moiya McTier of the Cool Worlds Lab explains how we started thinking about this and our novel method for attempting to detect such features. As always, we look forward to answering your questions you may have about our research - Have a great day! ::More about this Video:: ► McTier & Kipping, 2018, "Finding Mountains with Molehills: The Detectability of Exotopography": ► Intro landscape videos from Teton Gravity Research (https://vimeo.com/121045965), Sam Cossman (https://vimeo.com/105192180), Karim Iliya (https://vimeo.com/174796140) and David (https://vimeo.com/175777474). ► Orbital video footage from NASA/ISS ► Mars footage from NASA/JPL/University of Arizona ► Thumbnail image credit: Michael S. Helfenbein ► Cool Worlds Lab website: http://coolworlds.astro.columbia.edu ► Columbia University Department of Astronomy: http://www.astro.columbia.edu ► Intro song is "Reverence" by Triad, licensed through SoundStripe.com: https://app.soundstripe.com/songs/754 ► Background song is "Waking Up" by Atlas, licensed through SoundStripe.com: https://app.soundstripe.com/songs/3984 ::Playlists For Channel:: Latest Cool Worlds Videos ► http://bit.ly/NewCoolWorlds Cool Worlds Research ► http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsResearch Guest Videos ► http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsGuests Q&A Videos ► http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsQA Tabby's Star ► http://bit.ly/TabbysStar Science of TV/Film ► http://bit.ly/ScienceMovies ::Follow us:: SUBSCRIBE to the channel http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsSubscribe Cool Worlds Lab http://coolworlds.astro.columbia.edu Twitter https://twitter.com/david_kipping Instagram https://www.instagra