Tag Archives: More Than Science Fiction: Planets beyond the Solar System

Planets beyond the solar system at Vancouver’s (Canada) Nov. 25, 2014* Café Scientifique

Vancouver’s next Café Scientifique is being held in the back room of the The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.], Vancouver, Canada), on Nov. 25,  2014. Here’s the meeting description (from the Nov. 17, 2014 announcement),

… Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Aaron Boley. The title of his talk is:

More Than Science Fiction: Planets beyond the Solar System

For centuries we have relied on only the Solar System for understanding our origins. To dream of distant worlds was a mixture of reasoning, conjecture, and science fiction. Now, thousands of planets have been discovered outside of the Solar System, and we continue to learn more about the Solar System itself. In this talk, we will explore the wide variety of planetary systems that have so far been observed in the Galaxy. These new worlds, both alien and familiar, challenge our theories, but also give us new information for unlocking planet formation’s secrets.

You can find out more about Dr. Aaron Boley, astrophysicist, on his eponymous website where you’ll also find a link to Simulation movies such as this,

 Uploaded on Oct 27, 2010

The protoplanetary disk around a young, isolated star evolves over 16,000 years. Bright, dense spiral arms of gas and dust gradually develop and then collapse into denser clumps that could form planets. NCSA/NASA/A. Boley (Univ. of Florida)

* The event date in the headline was corrected to read: Nov. 25, 2014.