Planet-forming & Debris Disks

Overview In protoplanetary disks dust grains can grow into planetesimals, then rocky planets or planetary cores and sometimes gas-rich giant planets. Understanding this remarkable growth is an extremely challenging. Planet forming regions are typically enshrouded in dust and gas, obscuring the planet formation process. The large range of sizes and timescales makes first-principles numerical simulations impractical. Therefore, center members work to combine observations of planet forming...