Resolving Planet Formation and Evolution Through the Lens of Jupiters
Marta Bryan explores what gas giants reveal about the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Their brightness and mass make them useful observational targets, and their gravitational influence can reshape the orbits and environments of smaller planets. The seminar combines several approaches. High-resolution spectroscopy of directly imaged planets measures rotation and obliquity, providing evidence about angular-momentum evolution. Radial-velocity searches for Jupiter-like companions to known inner planets probe how giant planets affect system architecture and inform the search for habitable worlds. The presentation also introduces observational work on planetary interiors and magnetic fields as further ways to test formation models.
Hydrodynamic and dusty instabilities in planet formation
Planets form from dust embedded in gaseous protoplanetary disks. Hydrodynamic instabilities can hinder growth by stirring turbulence, yet also help by creating structures that collect solids and promote planetesimal formation. Min-Kai Lin will discuss analytical and numerical studies of the vertical shear instability and convective overstability, their interactions with dust, and generalisations of the streaming instability to disks with accretion or magnetic fields. The seminar examines how these processes alter the conditions for concentrating solids and the challenges that remain in connecting disk dynamics to planet formation.
The exoplanet revolution and life in the Universe - Public Lecture & Panel Discussion
Public lecture by Prof. Didier Queloz, FRS (Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy, Cambridge; Professor of Physics, ETH Zurich), organized by the Swiss Physical Society at EPFL, on how exoplanet discoveries transformed understanding of planet formation and the search for life signatures in planetary atmospheres. Free admission for the general public.