When
3:30 p.m., Feb. 23, 2010
Where
Kuiper Space Sciences Building 308
Dr. Jonathan Fortney of the University of California at Santa Cruz is the scheduled speaker.
There are now nearly 70 planets observed to transit their parent star, which allows for a precise measurement of a planet's mass and radius. Over 60 are gas-giant "hot Jupiters," while 3 are Neptune-class, and 2 are below 7 Earth masses. The recently announced low-mass planet GJ1214b, if it has any analog in the solar system, may be a mini-Neptune, but it could have no H-He envelope at all. I will present models of the interior structure and cooling of this intriguing planet. For the more massive hot Jupiters, about 1/3 have radii larger than expected, perhaps indicating an additional interior energy source. Heating via tidal dissipation has put forward by a number of authors, and I will present results of a model that fully couples the orbital and thermal evolution of close-in planets. This work casts some doubt on whether tidal heating is a cure-all for the large radius planets.
There are now nearly 70 planets observed to transit their parent star, which allows for a precise measurement of a planet's mass and radius. Over 60 are gas-giant "hot Jupiters," while 3 are Neptune-class, and 2 are below 7 Earth masses. The recently announced low-mass planet GJ1214b, if it has any analog in the solar system, may be a mini-Neptune, but it could have no H-He envelope at all. I will present models of the interior structure and cooling of this intriguing planet. For the more massive hot Jupiters, about 1/3 have radii larger than expected, perhaps indicating an additional interior energy source. Heating via tidal dissipation has put forward by a number of authors, and I will present results of a model that fully couples the orbital and thermal evolution of close-in planets. This work casts some doubt on whether tidal heating is a cure-all for the large radius planets.
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