Carbon in disks and rocky planets

Planet and dust grain

© C. Dominik

Dr. Carsten Dominik
(Anton Pannekoek Institute of Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Dienstag/Tuesday, 2019-04-23 14:00 c.t., Raum 114
Eugene-Paul-Wigner Gebäude, Hardenbergstr. 36, 10623 Berlin

Zusammenfassung/Abstract:
While carbon is one of the five most abundant elements in the universe, the Earth is surprisingly poor in carbon. With respect to silicon, its abundance is down by about a factor of 10000. This fact could be considered as surprising because meteorites contain carbon in the form of diamonds, graphite and also organic material with sublimation temperatures above those expected in the solar nebula the location where the Earth formed. A number of special processes have been suggested to move the solid carbon into the gas phase of a planet-forming disk before solids are gathered to form planets. I will show that the currently favoured explanation does not work and that it is therefore conceivable that rocky planets with appreciable carbon abundances do exist. I will discuss the properties of such planets using the results of geophysical models and high temperature/pressure experiments.