Planet Formation in the Era of Exoplanets

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One of the biggest mysteries today is how solids grow from the micron sizes seen in the interstellar medium to become fully-formed planets. This field is currently undergoing an observational revolution driven by the arrival of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), which is probing the gas and solids in protoplanetary discs with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. This is set to continue in the near future with the arrival of the James Webb Space Telescope and the Extremely Large Telescopes. The challenge today is to understand what these exquisite observations can tell us about the physics of planet formation.One of the biggest mysteries today is how solids grow from the micron sizes seen in the interstellar medium to become fully-formed planets. This field is currently undergoing an observational revolution driven by the arrival of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), which is probing the gas and solids in protoplanetary discs with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. This is set to continue in the near future with the arrival of the James Webb Space Telescope and the Extremely Large Telescopes. The challenge today is to understand what these exquisite observations can tell us about the physics of planet formation.

Our speaker Dr Richard Booth of the University of Leeds School of Physics & Astronomy studies planet formation and the 'protoplanetary' discs in which the planets form. He builds theory and computer models to explain the physics involved. Previously, he was a post-doc at Imperial and, before that, at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge.

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Host or Publisher Mexborough & Swinton Astronomical Society