Professor Phil Armitage
Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics & University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
Sponsored by the Institute of Physics in Ireland
Abstract: Observational progress in imaging protoplanetary disks and detecting extrasolar planets has challenged our understanding of how the typical planetary system forms. I will review these observations, and highlight the weak links they expose in the chain of physical processes that lead from small dust particles to terrestrial and giant planets. I will discuss in particular our recent work that aims to model the formation of the first asteroid-sized bodies, via direct simulation of the physics of aerodynamically coupled mixtures of dust and gas, and how that may be linked to the demographics of extrasolar planetary systems.