Seminar – Karin Öberg

Speaker: Karin Öberg, Department of Astronomy, Harvard University

Title: The Chemistry of Planet Formation

Abstract: Planets form in disks of dust and gas around young stars. The compositions of planets, including the hospitality to life, is fundamentally set by the composition of this dust and gas across the planet-forming disk. Recently we undertook a large ALMA project to map out the chemical content of five such disks at scales of 10s to 100s of au. We find a rich and highly unevenly distributed chemistry, manifest in 100s of molecular sub-structures including rings and gaps. I will present some of these images as well as discuss how the distribution of organics in disks, especially the prebiotically interesting nitriles, and oxygen depletion should inform models of planet formation and mature planet compositions. This observational lens will be supplemented by recent theory and experiments that help make sense of our increasingly detailed astrochemical observations, as well as some thoughts on how JWST will provide further constraints on the chemistry of planet formation.

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