Astrophysics Seminars

Paleoclimatological evidence suggests that the total gravitating mass density at the galactic plane is about twice the baryonic density. I will discuss this measurement and show that it is consistent with the different determinations of the local...

Observations of circumstellar debris disks have revealed that a subset of this population harbor a warm dust component. This dust is short-lived, requiring continual replenishment, and indicating that the disk must be excited by an unseen perturber...

Planets form from the coldest and densest parts of circumstellar disks around young stars. During this phase, the active nature of the star subjects the disk to relatively high fluxes of UV and X-ray photons and energetic particles. Simultaneously...

Galactic nuclei and the Massive black holes (MBHs) in their centers are rich environments, where the complex stellar dynamics plays an important role in many physical phenomena. We show that the standard description of the two-body relaxation...