Strange New Worlds: The Dwarf Planet Haumea and Other Large Trans-Neptunian Objects by George McDonald
We'll be taking a trip to some of the outermost large bodies in the Solar System (as far as we know). Our speaker and tour guide, George McDonald, is an expert in the alien environments found there, other places in our solar system, and beyond. Please see his description of his presentation below.
The New Horizons mission revealed Pluto to be a complex world, possessing both recently active geologic processes and extensive atmospheric photochemistry. There remain a minimum of seven other dwarf planets beyond Neptune’s orbit that have yet to be explored with spacecraft. I will discuss how we are combining telescope observations, theoretical predictions, and the findings from New Horizons to begin to understand what these worlds are like. I will focus in particular on the dwarf planet Haumea, whose 3.92 hour rotation period (or “day”) results in its peculiar shape as a triaxial ellipsoid, with profound implications for its surface environment. While Haumea is likely to be a primarily cratered object, the factor of 100 difference in its surface gravity between the pole and the equator should manifest in crater characteristics unseen elsewhere in the solar system. I will also discuss some of the other large trans-Neptunian objects, including the likeliest next candidates for spacecraft exploration.
About George McDonald
George (譲治) McDonald is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oregon, and will be starting in 2024 as a Research Professor at Portland State University. His research involves making theoretical predictions of the processes occurring on planetary bodies. The focus has been on surface-atmosphere interactions in the Solar System, but has also included work on the upper atmospheres of exoplanets, as well as on bodies with tenuous atmospheres. His research has been featured in Forbes, Yahoo News, and on BBC’s documentary Goodbye Cassini. Born in Tokyo, he obtained his BA in Physics from Cornell University, and a PhD in Planetary Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2018.