"The cradle of the Sun: was our Solar System born in a star cluster?"

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 18th February 2016 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: swmcmeet

Most stars are born with tens to millions of other stars in densely populated clusters. These are extremely hostile, violent environments for planets to form, and then for life to emerge and develop. Given that life did emerge in our Solar System, the obvious question to ask is: "Was our Sun lucky in escaping from it's birthplace unscathed by interactions with its siblings?" In this talk Richard will describe the evidence for the Sun being born in a cluster, and how it may have managed to survive its hostile birthplace.

 

Speaker: Dr. Richard Parker

Richard Parker was born and raised in Newcastle upon Tyne, he did his undergraduate degree at Sheffield University, which included a year on La Palma at the Isaac Newton Telescopes as a student support astronomer. He returned to Sheffield to complete a PhD, before a post-doctoral research position at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Richard then returned to the UK for a Royal Astronomical Society Fellowship at Liverpool John Moores University, and since 2017 he has been a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin fellow and lecturer at Sheffield.