[Baps] Planet Formation SSP Seminar, Monday 12:00

[Sarah Stewart-Mukhopadhyay]

CfA SSP Seminar
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/events/calendar/latest.html


DATE: MONDAY, September 24
TIME: 12:00
ROOM: Pratt Conference Room, 60 Garden St.
SPEAKER: Ruth Murray-Clay (U.C. Berkeley)

"Three Problems in Planet Formation: The Kuiper Belt, Hot Jupiters, and
Transitional Disks"

Abstract

The past 15 years have produced a plethora of observations that address
the question of how planetary systems form. I will discuss clues to
planet formation in three settings:

(1) Nearly a quarter of the ~500 Kuiper belt objects with securely
determined orbits are in mean-motion resonance with Neptune.  The planet
likely captured these KBOs as it scattered planetesimals and migrated
outward.  Does the noise inherent in migration driven by discrete
scattering events interfere with a planet's ability to capture bodies
into resonance?

(2) About 1 in 5 of the ~200 extrasolar planets discovered to date are
hot Jupiters, which likely migrated from their birthplaces to distances
less than 0.05 AU from their host stars.  Photoionization heating from
UV radiation incident on the atmospheres of hot Jupiters drives
planetary mass loss in the form of hydrodynamic winds.  What are the
properties of these winds, and how much mass will a hot Jupiter lose
over its lifetime?

(3) Approximately 10% of the disks around young stars have inner holes
but are still accreting.  These transitional disks are likely in the
process of dissipating. What drives disk accretion in these systems?
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