Berlin 2014 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe

EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 6: Exoplaneten und Astrobiologie

EP 6.6: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 20. März 2014, 11:45–12:00, DO24 1.103

Models of planet interiors and semiconvection in rotating spherical shells. — •Patrick Blies and Friedrich Kupka — University of Vienna, Austria

While the traditional school of thought on the inner structure of giant gas planets assumes their interior to consist of two separated, homogeneous layers around a solid rocky/icy core and an adiabatic temperature profile, Stevenson (1985) has called this assumption into question, when he suggested that a metallic gradient in the inner regions of a planet could lead to semiconvection. Leconte and Chabrier (2012) have shown that taking a mixed, inhomogeneous solid-gas composition as a model for giant gas planets leads to a much higher interior temperature and a non-adiabatic temperature profile, amongst other things. This could also help to explain Saturn's increased luminosity as they have shown in 2013. The question remains, however, if semiconvection is really taking place in giant gas planets and what its precise effects on thermal and solute transport properties are. That's why numerical experiments are needed. While there exist simulations of semiconvection, rotation has always been neglected so far. We present a first study of the effects of rotation on the temporal evolution of a semiconvective layer in a spherical shell.