Solid Planetary Physics Week 1: Introduction
Jiaqi Li
JLI@[Link]
(NASA Copyright)
Introduction
• Who you are, your major?
• What you want to learn from this class?
• A fun fact about yourself.
Introduction
• Who you are, your major?
• What you want to learn from this class?
• A fun fact about yourself.
Course Overview
• How do we know about the interiors of solid planetary bodies?
(their structure, composition, formation and evolution)
• Case studies – examples from this Solar System
➢ Earth, Mars
➢ the Moon, icy moons
➢ comets
• Techniques – to answer these questions
➢ Cosmochemistry
➢ Orbits and Gravity
➢ Geophysical modelling
➢ Seismology
Course Overview
Week Date Topics
1 2025/09/11 Intro 1
2 2025/09/18 Intro 2
3 2025/09/25 Solar System
4 2025/10/02 No Class
5 2025/10/09 Earth 1: Tectonics
6 2025/10/16 Earth 2: Interior and Seismology
7 2025/10/23 Mars 1: Tectonics
8 2025/10/30 Mars 2: Interior
9 2025/11/06 Core Formation
10 2025/11/13 Moon 1: Tectonics
11 2025/11/20 Moon 2: Interior
12 2025/11/27 Crater Counting
13 2025/12/04 Gravity and Orbits
14 2025/12/11 Presentation
15 2025/12/18 Icy Moons and Comets
16 2025/12/25 Scientific Writing
18 2026/01/08 Exam
Opportunities
• Scientific Projects
Opportunities
• Scientific Projects
• Conferences
Opportunities
• Scientific Projects
• Conferences
• Recommendation Letters
Logistics
Grading – based on:
1. Homework (30%)
2. Midterm presentation (30%)
3. Final (40%)
Homework due (two weeks)
Office hours:
17:00 – 18:00 or by appointment (email: JLI@[Link])
Our solar system
Astronomical Unit: AU
Our solar system
Astronomical Unit: AU
Our solar system
Astronomical Unit: AU
That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.
On it everyone you love,
everyone you know,
everyone you ever heard of,
every human being who ever was,
lived out their lives…
on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
—— Carl Sagan
A Babylonian map of the Universe, 1500 B.C.
The Babylonians also noticed some wandering objects
in the nightly sky moving irregularly against the star
background
- the prograde and retrograde motion of Mars
East
West
张衡 （78-139 AD） Ptolemy （90-168 AD）
Ptolemy’s geocentric model
Ptolemy’s geocentric model
Copernicus (1473 - 1543)
Copernicus (1473 - 1543)
𝐺𝑀 = 𝜔2 𝑟
Searching for Planets
Perturbations from Planets
K= 13 m/s (Jupiter)
K= 8 cm/s (Earth)
𝐾
Δ𝜆 = 𝜆
𝑐
~ 0.00016Å
~ 0.0000013Å
多普勒红移
Discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star
1995, Nature, 378, 355
Exoplanets
Kepler-70b 55 cnc e
周期短（5.76小时） 三分之一是钻石
温度最高（7178K)
最黑的行星Tres2b 棉花糖行星
Kepler-b,c,d
WASP-107b
非常蓬松，
密度非常低
水密度的1/100
Planet with two suns Kepler-16b：200 Light year
比邻星
Proxima
Habitable zone
Milky Way:
200,000,000,000 Solar Systems
200 Billions
Solar System 银河系约含2000亿个太阳
Universe ~ 100 Billions Galaxies
Galaxy ~ 100 Billions Stars
（100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Stars）
N = 9.1x10-11 – 1.56x107 !!!
Solar System Formation
Solar System Formation