Got Planets? We see them and we can 'make' them!

There are more than 1952 planets orbiting other stars, and more than 488 multiple planet systems and many more planet candidates awaiting confirmation.  With improved detecting technology and more searching missions the total will continue to increase. This seminar will provide an overview of the observations and theories of planet formation, and the constraints that the observations impose on the theories.

The Core Nucleated Accretion model is generally accepted as the working theory of planet formation that explains the planets in our solar system. However, the planets around other stars pose challenges to this theory. This seminar will focus on the Core Accretion model: its features, its computational methods, its successes, recent progress and future work.  This model and the proposed modifications to the theory have demonstrated how the scientific method rules!

Speaker: Dr. Olenka Hubicdkyj, San Jose State University