Circumbinary Planets

In the last few years, the Kepler Spacecraft has found a dozen or so transiting planets orbiting around binary stars.  The existence of these circumbinary planets suggests that planets can form efficiently around stellar binaries. I will discuss some of the challenges to the theory of planet formation posed by these cicumbinary planets, focusing on the issue of the survival of planets around shrinking binaries.

Speaker: 
Dong Lai (Cornell University)
Location: 
KIAA, 1st floor meeting room
Time: 
Mon, 2016-01-11 12:00 to 13:00