Planetary Science Seminar

I will project a bird's eye view of secular dynamical processes which, slowly but "surely", sculpt the architecture of systems of self-gravitating particles within the reach of a dominating central body. Such systems are characterized by a hierarchy of timescales which makes for economy of mathematical means in the study of their long term dynamical evolution. Some will get disrupted on potentially rough rides through secular resonances; others will self-organize through symmetry-breaking phase transitions. Structures ranging in scale from multi-planets in wide binaries, to stellar black hole nuclei (Andromeda's in particular) will provide a natural playground in which to follow processes at work, and feature powerful tools with which we apprehend them.