Speaker: Hilke Schlichting, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA

Title: "The Marriage of Dwarf Planets and other Kuiper Belt Residents"

Abstract:
The Kuiper Belt is located in the outer region of our Solar System,
extending from the orbit of Neptune, located at 30 AU, to about 55 AU
from the Sun. To date, more than 1000 members of the Kuiper Belt have
been detected with radii ranging from few tens of km to about 1000 km.
One of the many intriguing puzzles of the Kuiper Belt is that
a substantial fraction, about 20%, of its largest members are
in binary systems. I will be talking about the formation of these
Kuiper Belt Binaries and its implication for planet formation in
the outer Solar System.