Unlocking the organic chemistry of planet formation

Planetary systems, such as our own, are assembled from dust, gas, and ice contained in protoplanetary discs around young stars. Studying these discs gives us unique insights into the raw material that goes on to form planets, and can answer fundamental questions about our place in the Universe. Is our Solar System rare? What types of planets are commonly formed? Where and how do planets inherit their composition?

While much progress has recently been made on studying protoplanetary discs with observatories such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), this is only able to tell us about the outer regions of protoplanetary discs where giant planets like Jupiter or Saturn might form. We know very little about the composition of i) the inner protoplanetary disc, where Earth-like (or terrestrial) planets are expected to form, and ii) the disc midplane, where the planet formation process starts.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will soon provide a unique window on protoplanetary discs. JWST will open up the innermost regions of discs, and SKA will peer into their most dense regions in the midplane. In this Fellowship, I will use a combination cutting-edge observations from these facilities, along with predictions from computer models, to understand the composition of protoplanetary discs across their full extent for the first time.

My results will shed new light on the chemical composition of the raw material available for planet formation, and determine how similar this material is to our own Solar System.