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Seminar: Pandemonium in the Planetary Graveyard

The afterlife of planetary systems is chaotic. White dwarfs preserve the debris of shattered planets, revealing their chemistry, history, and surprising signs of water.

Professor Jay Farihi from UCL is an expert in polluted white dwarfs and will talk about mayhem during the last stages of stellar evolution.

Thursday 30.07.2026 02:07 pm

Defying the notion of the silent graveyard, planetary systems refuse to die quietly. Instead, a significant fraction show one or more signs of dynamical reanimation, with strong indications of general mayhem during the last stages of stellar evolution. I will give a brief tour of these evolved and active planetary systems, which provide major insights into rocky planetary bodies in particular. These descendants of intermediate-mass stars reveal characteristics of their former planetary systems in ways unattainable by conventional methods using main-sequence stars. In particular, the metal pollution observed in white dwarf stars reveals the bulk chemistry of entire planetesimals or planetary fragments, including compelling evidence for Earth-like chemistry, planetary differentiation, and believe it or not - water. This talk will cover some of the highlights of the active planetary graveyard, including variability and transient behavior.

Information

 

IWF Seminar series

Speaker
Prof. Jay Farihi

When
30.07.2026, 14.00 Uhr

Where
U.a.4 in-person and via Zoom

Recordings
Please be aware that the talks may be recorded, including the questions asked by the audience after the talk.