Скачать или смотреть Pluto Strikes Back by Dr. Scott Kenyon

A presentation by Dr. Scott Kenyon
Saturday, September 3 at Seagrave Observatory & via Zoom, 7:00pm EDT

Together with its four small satellites, the Pluto-Charon binary planet provides fascinating insights into the origin and ear- ly evolution of the solar system. It is also an interesting testbed for theories of circum- binary planet formation. After describing the system architecture as revealed by HST [Hubble Space Telescope] and New Hori- zons, Dr. Kenyon will summarize a suite of numerical simulations designed to con- strain satellite masses and to test models for satellite formation.

Dr. Kenyon is (primarily) a theoretical astrophysicist who studies the formation and evolution of stars/planets, hyperveloci- ty stars, and interacting binary systems. He wrote the book on Symbiotic Stars. With Lee Hartmann, he constructed flared disk models for newly-formed stars and showed that FU Orionis objects are accretion disks. With Jane Luu and Ben Bromley, he devel- oped numerical simulations for the for- mation of planets and debris disks. These calculations were the first to build Earth- mass planets out of ensembles of km-sized planetesimals and to demonstrate that de- bris disks are the remains of newly-formed planetary systems.