Planet formation in the lab: liquid impacts as analogs for planetary collisions

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• Maylis Landeau (Cambridge)
• Thursday 01 February 2018, 11:30-12:30
• Martin Ryle Seminar Room, Kavli Institute.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Ed Gillen.

Planet accretion models predict that terrestrial planets form by successive collisions in a disk of orbiting objects. During the late, most energetic collisions, shock waves melt the colliding embryos, which then behave as fluids. Existing simulations of these collisions reproduce the large-scale flow, but cannot resolve the smallest scales. The small-scale processes are however crucial to predict the mixing between the colliding embryos and the composition of the post-impact planet.

In contrast, laboratory experiments fully resolve small-scale turbulence and mixing. I will present experiments on the impact of a liquid volume with a liquid layer in a regime relevant to planetary accretion events. From these, we obtain scaling laws for mixing of the impactor as a function of impact velocity, impactor size and density difference. I will discuss implications for chemical equilibration during planetary impacts.

This talk is part of the Exoplanet Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cambridge Astronomy Talks
• Combined External Astrophysics Talks DAMTP
• Cosmology, Astrophysics and General Relativity
• Exoplanet Seminars
• Institute of Astronomy Talk Lists
• LCLU Departmental Talks
• Martin Ryle Seminar Room, Kavli Institute

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