Planetary Dynamics in the Era of Kepler and Big
Data
Dr. Eric Ford
University of Florida
For centuries, planet formation theories
were fine tuned to explain the details of solar
system. The diversity of architectures of
planetary systems uncovered by Doppler surveys challenged
previous theories and led to insights into planet
formation, orbital migration and the excitation
of orbital eccentricities and inclinations.
Recently, NASA's Kepler mission has identified over 300
systems with multiple transiting planet
candidates, including many potentially rocky
planets. I will present a few particularly interesting
planetary systems and discuss early efforts to translate these
observations into constraints on the formation and orbital
evolution of planetary systems. I will
include examples of current challenges for the
statistical interpretation of exoplanet observations to
illustrate the challenges and opportunities associated with
"big data".