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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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The unexpected diversity of observed extrasolar planetary systems has posed new challenges to our classical understanding of planetary formation. A lot of these challenges can be addressed by a deeper understanding of the dynamics in planetary systems, which will also allow us to construct more accurate planetary formation theories consistent with observations.
In this talk, I will first explain the origin of counter orbiting planets using a new dynamical mechanism I discovered, which also has wide implications in other astrophysical systems, such as the enhancement of tidal disruption rates near supermassive black hole binaries. Then, I will illustrate another dynamical mechanism which can produce the detected spin-orbit misalignment for system Kepler-56. In addition, I will uncover the architectural properties of circumbinary planetary systems from selection biases using statistical methods, and infer the origin of such systems.
