Astrophysics Seminars

The fast-paced discovery of extrasolar planets has heightened interest in the mechanisms by which planets form. The early stages of planet formation -- growth from dust grains to "planetesimals" larger than a kilometer -- is a long-standing problem...

Four centuries ago the son of an Italian lutenist constructed the telescopes with which he would observe the Solar System and forever alter humanity's perception of its place in the Cosmos. Today, that perspective continues to change with the...

In protostellar accretion disks, magnetorotational turbulence not only transports angular momentum, allowing accretion, but it also strongly influences planet formation. I will consider the influence of turbulence on the formation of planetesimals...

With the progress of collisionless Hall-MHD reconnection models a really burning question arises. Is the reconnection rate fast in collisionless environments and slow when collisions are important? The positive answer to that question means that all...