Time:  Tuesday ( 10:00am-11:0am) ,October 8th

Location: Middle conference room, 3rd floor

Speaker：Philippe Thebault (Associate Professor at Paris Observatory, Meudon, France)

Title: Living the hard life: Planets in Binaries

Abstract: Over the past decade more than 80 exoplanets have been discovered in binary systems. Some of these planets inhabit very "extreme" worlds, where the second star is no more than 20AU away from the primary. How do planets form in such a highly perturbed environment? To answer that question, several studies have investigated how each step of the "classical" planet-formation scenario is affected by the presence of a companion star. I will present the work done by my team, which focuses on one specific stage of planet-formation, the one leading from kilometre-sized planetesimals to large planetary embryos. We have shown that this stage can be fully stopped in close binaries (20AU). It is thus very difficult to explain the formation of the planets that have been discovered in these systems. How can this paradox be explained? I will review a few potential solutions.