Project description
The creation of solar systems from stars to planets to moons
The disks around young stars (circumstellar disks) contain the stuff of which planets are made. Circumplanetary disks around planets that control a planet's formation and give rise to a planet's moons have been theorised to exist for a couple of decades. However, the first observation of such a disk came just a year ago. Understanding how planets and their moons form, as well as their interrelationship, is critical to our understanding of our own planet and solar system, and to our search for other planets like ours. We need to know what we are looking for to find it. The EU-funded PLAMO project is developing advanced models of planet and moon growth that integrate machine learning with present and future instrumentation and experiments to enhance the likelihood we will detect more 'birth nests'.
Objective
Understanding better planet- and moon-formation is a key to comprehend how planetary systems –
including our own – came to be. To study these processes, we need computer simulations of their birth
nests, the disks around the young stars (circumstellar disks) where planets are born; and disks around
forming planets (circumplanetary disks) where moons assemble. Circumplanetary disks are located within
the circumstellar disks and they were first detected observationally in June 2019, after twenty years of
numerical simulations predicting their existence. Therefore, it is very timely to study their characteristics.
Circumplanetary disks have three main roles. Firstly, the are channelling material to the forming planets,
hence they regulate the formation timescale and the final planetary mass. Secondly, they are the birth-place
for moons to grow. Thirdly, they surround and embed the forming planet, hence affect the observational
appearance of forming planets.
Developing state-of-the-art gas-dust thermo-hydrodynamical simulations, combining them with radiative
transfer, N-body simulations, and for the first time with machine learning, offers a completely new window
to reveal how planet- and moon-formation takes place. The three scientific projects of this proposal are: I.
Understanding the thermo-hydrodynamical effects on planetary growth, on the formation timescale at
different locations of the circumstellar disk, and hence the diversity of the final planetary masses. II.
Observational predictions of forming planets from the simulations – which instrument can be used to
detect them, what information can be gained from these observations, and what are the general
characteristics of circumstellar disks determined with machine learning. III. Studying moon-formation in
the circumplanetary disk, provide predictions of how the exomoon population looks like, and what fraction
of exomoons is detectable with current and near-future instrumentation.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-STG - Starting GrantHost institution
8092 Zuerich
Switzerland