Planetary Geology seminars

This seminar examines comet impacts during the dispersal of the outer Solar System's planetesimal disk. Instability among the giant planets sent some bodies toward the terrestrial planets. Noble gases preserved in Earth's atmosphere provide evidence for the scale of this bombardment and help relate its timing to the growth of Earth.

When did the giant planets become dynamically unstable? This lecture compares evidence from lunar impact craters, binary objects in the Kuiper belt and dynamical models. It explains why these constraints matter for reconstructing Solar System evolution and why the timing remains an unresolved research question.