Dr. Samatha Lawler
Wednesday, February 13th, 2019
At 7:30 PM In Room A104, Bob Wright Centre, UVic
Abstract:Over the last couple of years, there have been many headlines about the possibility of an undiscovered giant planet in the outer reaches of our Solar System. But is it real? Dr. Sam Lawler will lead you through the wilds of the distant Kuiper Belt with a surprisingly digestible (we promise!) discussion of orbital dynamics, observation biases, and dwarf planet discoveries. She will show you the latest discoveries from a large international collaboration, including astronomers right here in Canada, and you can decide for yourself whether or not you believe in Planet 9.
Sam Lawler received her B.S. in astrophysics from Caltech, followed by 2 years of research work at Caltech’s IPAC facility on early Spitzer data of debris disks. She then received her M.A. from Wesleyan University before coming to Canada for her PhD work at UBC. She has been in Victoria ever since her PhD, initially as a UVic postdoc/lecturer, and since 2015 as a Plaskett Fellow at NRC-Herzberg. Her work utilizes dynamical simulations of the effects of planets on debris disks and on the structure of the Kuiper Belt. Several of her recent projects involve dynamically testing the existence of reported planets. She has shown tau Ceti’s reported planet system is allowed by its wide debris disk, Fomalhaut b is likely a catastrophically disrupted icy body, and the structure of the Kuiper Belt does not require an additional distant planet in the Solar System. While her dynamical simulations are running on the computer cluster, she likes to play with her kids and grow food.