This ScienceLives article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.
Smadar Naoz is an IAU Gruber fellow postdoc at the Northwestern University, CIERA. This fall she is at Harvard University as an ITC fellow. Naoz is a theoretical astrophysicist, and her main research subject is the study of the formation and properties of the first generations of galaxies. Although much about the first and last chapters of the cosmic story have been uncovered, scientists' understanding of the middle part of the cosmic story remains incomplete. Basic questions regarding the transformation of the uniform early gas into the galaxies we see today, and what were the different properties of those objects, are still open. Naoz seeks to uncover the answers to those questions.
Naoz also studies the different dynamical processes that take place in extrasolar systems and in our solar system. The search for extrasolar planets has led to the surprising discovery of many Jupiter-like planets in very close proximity to their host star, the so-called "hot Jupiters". Even more surprisingly, some of the hot Jupiters have orbits that are elongated or highly inclined with respect to the equator of the star, and some are even orbiting counter to the star's spin direction. In our own solar system, all of the planets are roughly in the same plane and orbiting the sun in the same direction as the sun's spin. Consequently, observations of those retrograde hot Jupiters pose a unique challenge to all planet=formation models, and in particular, how the planets get so close to the star in such orbits. For more information about the research, view the National Science Foundation press release. To learn more about Naoz, read her responses to the 10 ScienceLives questions below.
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