Presents
The KITP Public Lecture Series
You Say You Want a Revolution: Planetary Systems Different from Our Own
sponsored by Friends of KITP
For the first time, we humans are surveying the nearest stars to detect
planetary systems. The key question is whether our Solar System is
special in some way that might explain the proliferation of life on
the third planet. Our search is revealing the masses and orbits of
the planets around nearby stars.
Remarkably, the properties of the 60 planets found so far differ from
the nine planets in our Solar System. The possibility looms that some
(and perhaps most) planetary systems have different architectures than
our Solar System. Most of the planets reside in elliptical orbits
rather than circular. Such planets will suffer wild temperature
fluctuations as they travel close to and far from the host star. The
chemistry and atmospheres on these planets are significantly altered
by the orbit and mass of the planet. Planets the size of Earth remain
undetectable, however, various pieces of evidence suggest that Earths
are common.
Geoffrey Marcy is Professor of Astronomy at the University of
California, Berkeley. Before moving to Berkeley in 1997, he was a
Distinguished University Professor at San Francisco State
University. Dr. Marcy\'s research is focused on the detection of
extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs. His team has discovered several
dozen extrasolar planets, allowing study of their masses, radii, and
orbits. Among the planets is the first multiple-planet system, the
first Saturn candidates, and the first transiting planet. Ongoing work
is designed to study the mass distribution of planets and the
eccentricity of their orbits. The 5-year goal is to find Jupiter
analogs around other stars.
His discovery of extrasolar planets was just recognized by the
National Academy of Science by the awarding of the Henry Draper Medal
to Marcy and his long-time collaborator, Paul Butler. Marcy was
California Scientist of the Year in 2000 and received the Manne
Siegbahn Award from the Physics Committee of the Swedish Academy in
1996. Dr. Marcy is the first director of the Center for Integrative
Planetary Science at UC-Berkeley, designed to study the formation,
geophysics, chemistry and evolution of planets.