Planet Formation

3-0-9 units · Graduate

Explores the formation and physical and chemical evolution of planetary systems and the astronomical techniques that allow us to study these processes in situ. Topics include the formation and evolution of protoplanetary disks, disk instabilities, grain growth, core formation, atmospheric accretion and disk dissipation. Students taking the graduate version have additional, tougher questions on each of the problem sets and are expected to undertake a more extensive research project than undergraduates, to be used to develop a research proposal.