You are invited to attend a thesis presentation by Astronomy PhD Candidate, Rebekah Dawson, entitled On the Migratory Behavior of Planetary Systems.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
2:30 PM
Phillips Auditorium
Abstract: For centuries, an orderly view of planetary system architectures, inspired by the nearly circular and co-planar orbits of our solar system's planets, dominated the discourse on planetary systems. However, there is growing evidence that many planetary systems, including our own solar system, underwent a period of upheaval, during which giant planets "migrated" from where they formed to where we observe them today. Using evidence from the modern orbits of extra-solar planets and from debris disks, I investigate a question key to understanding how planetary systems evolve: is giant planet migration typically a smooth, disk-driven process or a violent process involving strong multi-body gravitational interactions? Along the way, I present new approaches for extracting planetary orbital information from radial velocity measurements and transit photometry. Based on the dynamics of extra-solar planets and our solar system's Kuiper belt, I make the case that both disk migration and planet-planet interactions likely play a role in setting the architectures of planetary systems.
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