EPSS Colloquium spring-2012

I will discuss recent insights that we have gained into planet formation and debris disks. In the first half of my talk, I will focus on the Kuiper belt, located at the outskirts of our planetary system, and the formation of debris disks. I will show how studying small km-sized Kuiper belt objects enables us to put our Kuiper belt into context of debris disks around other stars and I will explain how we can use the size distribution of small Kuiper belt objects and debris disks to gain insights into collisional cascades and the material properties of the objects themselves. In the second half, I will review dynamical models and geochemical constraints from the Earth, Moon and Mars and discuss their implications for the last stage of terrestrial planet formation.