The geoscience department weekly seminar presents: 

Speakers: Dr. Jason Steffen & Dr. Zhaohuan Zhu

Prof. Steffen will talk about how the processes of planet formation and dynamical evolution shape the orbits of the planets in a planetary system, and how we can use present-day system properties to infer the history of these systems.  He will show examples from the solar system and compare them with what we observe in extrasolar planetary systems.

Recent observations allow us to image the planet construction zone in young stellar systems for the first time. Many disk structures (e.g. spirals, gaps, warps) have emerged. In this talk, Prof. Zhu will discuss how numerical simulations help us understand planet formation process. Then, he will apply the planet-disk interaction theory to substructures in observations to reveal the potential young planet population.