University of St Andrews

Building planets is a dirty business. First of all, planets are made out of the dirt we call interstellar dust. Secondly, the physics involved is not “clean” in a sense that neither the processes involved, nor the initial conditions are known. Solid state physics, radiation transport, gas phase and surface chemistry, magnetic fields and hydrodynamic instabilities at high Reynolds numbers are just some of the aspects that are certainly involved in growing the sub-micrometer sized interstellar dust by 40 orders of magnitude in mass to a full-fledged planet. Given this complexity and dynamic range, it is perhaps not surprising, that the formation processes of planets are still poorly understood, even though thousands of planets beyond our solar system are known today.

Some of the biggest mysteries of planet formation lie in the early stages: growing the asteroid-sized building blocks of planets. Recent years have seen a revolution in observing capabilities delivering data of unprecedented detail and sensitivity. They have partially confirmed our theoretical expectations, partially surprised us. In this lecture, I will discuss some of the basic concepts and the problems we are facing from the theoretical side. I will outline how they might be overcome and will show how recent observational break-throughs revolutionize this exciting field, bringing us closer to solving the puzzle of planet formation.

A very small number of planet-forming discs around young stars host hydrogenated nano-diamonds. These nano-particles were discovered in meteorites on Earth in the 1930s, and their infrared signatures were first found in space environments in 1980. The origins of the particles are obscure, even in the solar system, and most astronomers have been happily oblivious of the whole topic. I will discuss an unexpected outcome of our observations made to track grain growth in these proto-planetary discs, where the only three systems known to host nano-diamonds also showed anomalous microwave emission. This serendipitous result has led to a well-evidenced carrier-particle for this AME (after twenty years of debate), using the well characterised environments of circumstellar discs.

Following the successful flyby of Pluto in 2015, New Horizons continued out into the Kuiper Belt to pursue its mission of explorations of the outer reaches of the solar system.  The next chapter in this exploration is being written through the encounter with (486958) 2014MU69, nicknamed "Ultima Thule" that occurred on 2019 Jan 1.  This phase of the mission was very challenging but worth all of that effort as we see the new data continuing to be received from the spacecraft.  This chapter that New Horizons is now writing would not have been possible without broad support from the community and formidible ground-based and space-based telescopes we have at our disposal.  However, there is a special synergy between New Horizons, the Hubble Space Telescope, and ESA's Gaia Mission and the people behind these missions.

My presentation will provide a glimpse into the work that began in 2004 and culminating in the first ever flyby of a cold-classical Kuiper Belt object.  I will present a summary of what it took to get there as well as an update on the current scientific results from the mission.

Imaging is the key to discovery in science and yet conventional microscopes can damage delicate materials and devices; altering the very structures that they are trying to see. However, the scanning helium microscope (SHeM) opens a new window on science; providing for the first time completely non-damaging imaging using beams of neutral helium atoms. This talk will explain the importance of microscopy in science and descibe how the development of the SHeM revolutionises the imaging of delicate materials (such as biological samples) and the potential for damage-free microscopy to impact society. The presentation will also highlight the importance of international collaboration in science and its role in the development of new technology.