Speaker
Description
Studies of chondritic meteorites originating from the Solar System have revealed that chondrules - small, spherical silicate inclusions - can be formed by intense, rapid heating followed by rapid cooling. A viable explanation for their formation is that in the primordial stages of the protoplanetary disk electrical discharges or lightning can occur and cause melting of the different size dust grains and chemical interaction with the gas. Such lightning phenomena may occur due to charge separation in the disk. In the protoplanetary disk charge separation occurs inside pressure maxima or anticyclonic vortices.
In this talk I will show this phenomenon using hydrodynamical simulations. My results indicate that dust grains of different sizes present in the material of a protoplanetary disk become spatially separated. Assuming that dust grains of different sizes carry different electrical charges, this spatial separation can lead to energetic discharges, ie. lightning. Such short duration brightening events may reveal a novel phenomenon in planet formation.