ISSI Workshop

Solar System History from Isotopic Volatile Signatures

14-18 January 2002 at ISSI, Bern, Switzerland

 

The workshop on ‘Solar System History from Isotopic Volatile Signatures' is intended to provide an interdisciplinary forum to identify and catalogue current isotopic ratios among the most volatile elements in the solar system and to understand the ways in which these ratios were established. This requires separate analyses of the Sun, planets, satellites, comets, meteorites and interplanetary dust particles, as well as a review of isotopic ratios in star-forming interstellar clouds. In addition, the workshop will explore the ways in which isotope ratios can be changed, and the implications of these changes for the histories of the various solar system bodies on which they have been observed to occur.

A careful study of isotopes provides insight into the mass-dependent escape of gases from planetary atmospheres, the preservation of interstellar materials in comets, meteorites, and possibly planets, the processes involved in the formation of the solar nebula and the protoplanetary disk from an interstellar cloud, and the origin of planets and satellites from that nebula. The latter study is bound to shed some light on the formation of the newly discovered extrasolar giant planets.

 

Convenors:

T. Encrenaz, Observatoire de Paris, Meudon, France, Therese.Encrenaz@obspm.fr
J. Geiss, International Space Science Institute, Bern, Switzerland, johannes.geiss@issi.unibe.ch
R. Kallenbach, International Space Science Institute, Bern, Switzerland, reinald.kallenbach@issi.unibe.ch
K. Mauersberger, MPI für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany, Konrad.Mauersberger@mpi-hd.mpg.de
T. Owen, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, USA, owen@uhifa.ifa.hawaii.edu
F. Robert, Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France, Robert@cimrs1.mnhn.fr

 

Local Organizers:

Johannes Geiss, Reinald Kallenbach, Brigitte Fasler, Ursula Pfander, Xavier Schneider, Diane Taylor, Silvia Wenger

Contact:

International Space Science Institute, Hallerstrasse 6. CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
Tel.: +41 31 631 4891, Fax: +41 31 631 4897,
e-mail:
fasler@issi.unibe.ch or kallenbach@issi.unibe.ch

 

Homepage for Participants (restricted access)