Astrophysics & Planetary Sciences Colloquium

Dragonfly: In Situ Exploration of Titan's Prebiotic Chemistry and Habitability

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Abstract:
	Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is an ocean world with a dense
atmosphere, abundant complex organic material on its icy surface, and a
liquid-water ocean in its interior.  The joint NASA-ESA Cassini- Huygens
mission revealed Titan to be surprisingly Earth-like, with active
geological processes and opportunities for organic material to have mixed
with liquid water on the surface in the past.

Testing the Physics of Solar and Stellar Flares with Extreme UV Observations and Radiative MHD Simulations

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A Pretty Image from the Talk

Abstract:

Solar and stellar flares are the most intense emitters of X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation in planetary systems. On the Sun, strong flares are usually found in newly emerging sunspot regions. The emergence of these magnetic sunspot groups leads to the accumulation of magnetic energy in the corona.

Formation of a Hot Corona and Quasi-periodic Oscillations in General Relativistic MHD Simulations of Luminous Black Hole Accretion Disks

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Abstract:
	The gravitational pull of a black hole attracts gas and forms a
physical laboratory whose extreme conditions cannot be replicated on Earth.
The infalling gas forms an accretion disk where the interplay between
hydromagnetic processes and the warping of space-time releases
gravitational energy in the form of radiation, relativistic jets, and
winds. It is likely that most gas falls into black holes when the accretion
rate approaches the Eddington limit, at which point radiation pressure
overcomes gravity.
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