Planets are formed in “protoplanetary disks” composed of gas and dust orbiting a central star. Once a planet has formed in the disk, the radius of its orbit can change due to gravitational forces between the planet and material in the disk. In this way, planets can migrate from their original location, a phenomenon that… Read more »
Entries by Karna Desai
The universe full of exoplanets
Our understanding of the formation of planetary systems has historically been based on the observations about our own Solar System. A planet is a roughly spherical object orbiting a star that has sufficiently strong gravity to clear its orbital path of other debris. The four terrestrial planets (Earth, Venus, Mercury, and Mars) of our Solar… Read more »
The need of our times: Support for fundamental science research
If you are an undergraduate student, you probably share some attributes with other readers of this blog. You are likely a millennial, meaning that you may not remember the fall of the Berlin wall, and to you, the space race is a distant past. Federal funding for “fundamental” or “basic” science research was at the all-time… Read more »
Early evolution of protoplanetary disks
Anyone growing up in the 1990s or earlier would recollect that our solar system had nine planets, but did you ever wonder if planets exist outside the solar system? Planets found outside of our solar system are called extrasolar planets or exoplanets. Approximately 5,600 exoplanet candidates have been discovered since 1993, and nearly 2,000 exoplanets have… Read more »