Planets, unlike stars, are thought to form from the bottom up. We review the "core accretion" theory for giant planets like Jupiter, and how it stacks up against modern-day observations of exoplanets. With the recent discovery of planets still embedded in their natal disks, planet formation is finally becoming an empirical science, in the same way that star formation matured into its present form with the advent of infrared surveys of molecular clouds.
Speaker: Eugene Chiang, University of California, Berkley
Host: TBA
CIERA Astrophysics
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