Departmental Colloquium - Asymmetric Infalling Streamers Feed and Alter Protostellar Disks on the Cusp of Planet Formation

Date

Friday November 14, 2025
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm

Location

STI A

Dominique Segura-Cox
University of Rochester

 

Abstract

Evidence that planet formation begins when protostars are less than 1 million years old continues to build. During this early phase of star formation, protostars and their disks are still embedded in (and feeding from) their natal environments at a time when the first steps of planet formation occur. In particular, streamers---long and narrow infalling channels that funnel material to disks from their environments---have been predicted theoretically in simulations and serendipitously observed in a variety of tracers.  In this talk I will outline the various ways streamers can influence the star and planet formation process and describe how asymmetric infall from the larger-scale environment influences disk structure, temperature, and chemistry.  These disk properties are directly connected to when planets form, where, and with what composition. Despite the growing evidence that the larger scale environments have an influence on the youngest planet-forming disks, my PRODIGE survey, carried out with the NOEMA interferometer, is the first and only large observing program specifically designed with streamers in mind.

 

Timbits, coffee, tea will be served in STI A before the colloquium.

 

 

Departmental Colloquium -The Search for Dark Matter and Resolving the DAMA Conundrum

Date

Friday November 7, 2025
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm

Location

STI A

Reina Maruyama
Yale University

 

Abstract

Astrophysical observations give overwhelming evidence for the existence of dark matter. Physicists from all over the world are mounting experiments to look for a variety of dark matter candidates that include WIMPs, axions, and their cousins, with no conclusive detection yet. There was one anomaly: a clear and persistent annual modulation observed in the data from DAMA/NaI and DAMA/LIBRA experiments. Since the late '90s, the DAMA collaboration has insisted that the annual modulation in their data is evidence for detection of dark matter, and there have been many speculations about the source of the modulation. I will summarize the status of the field, the ongoing work with COSINE-100, and discuss our most recent publication together with the ANAIS-112 experiment that addresses this question (PRL 135 121002, (2025)) in which we reject dark matter as the reason for DAMA’s observed modulation.

 

Timbits, coffee, tea will be served in STI A before the colloquium.

 

 

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