Title: Extrasolar Planets
Speaker: Norm Murray
Abstract:
The nearly 100 extrasolar planets discovered over the last six years reveal a completely unexpected aspect of planet formation. They provide evidence of large scale planet migration, violent resonant interactions between Jupiter-mass planets, and, more speculatively, the late accretion of tens of Earth masses of heavy elements onto the surfaces of the parent stars. I will describe the phenomenology, and critique the two classes of theories put forth to explain that phenomenology; migration in a gas disk, and migration in a planetesimal disk.Lunch with the students will be on Friday, November 9 at 12:00 in A-101.