NEWS at MPA

Speaker: Anders Johansen

 "Planet formation in protoplanetary discs"

Special MPA Colloquium
The detection of large populations of pebbles of mm-cm sizes in protoplanetary discs around young stars has motivated the study of pebble accretion as a driver of planetary growth. This seminar covers all aspects of planet formation by pebble accretion, from dust growth over planetesimal formation to the accretion of planetary embryos and fully-grown planets with gaseous envelopes.  Pebbles are accreted at a very high rate, orders of magnitude higher than accretion of planetesimals, and the rate decreases only slowly with distance from the central star. This allows planetary cores to start their growth in much more distant positions than their final orbits. The giant planets orbiting our Sun and other stars, including systems of exoplanets in very wide orbits, can therefore be formed in complete consistency with planetary migration. I will demonstrate tracks of planetary mass versus semi-major axis for all the major classes of planets and outline priorities for future research directions in planet formation. [more]
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