Stanford Planetary Science and Exploration Seminar

Interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) are small particles ranging from nanometers to centimeters that are present throughout the solar system. IDPs are produced by several processes such as cometary outgassing, asteroidal collisions, and grain-grain mutual collisions. As IDPs orbit the Sun, they impact all planetary bodies and contribute to several important processes, including contamination of planetary atmospheres with metallic atoms, erosion and weathering of planetary surfaces, and chemical modification of the solar wind. IDPs are also a natural hazard to all robotic and human spacecraft and/or landed assets (e.g., on the lunar surface).

In this talk, I describe the fundamentals of the distribution of IDPs in the solar system (also known as the “zodiacal cloud”) and touch on both remote-sensing and in-situ observations. I also compare models and constraints on our solar system’s zodiacal cloud to those observed around other stars - so called “exozodiacal clouds”. This comparison helps to place our solar system in context with other star systems and in doing so, may point to evidence of our solar system’s particularly violent youth.

Speaker: Andrew Poppe, UC Berkeley

Attend in person (Room 350/372) or watch online (see weblink)