Konstantin batygin biography sample
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The Violent Biography of Our Solar System
The story of the birth of our solar system has been worn smooth through years of retelling. It starts billions of years ago with a black, slowly spinning cloud of gas and dust. The cloud collapses, forming our sun at its heart. In time, the eight planets, along with lesser worlds such as Pluto, emerge from leftover gas and debris swirling about our star. This system of sun and planets has been whirling through space ever since, its motions as accurate and predictable as clockwork.
In recent years astronomers have glimpsed subtle clues that belie this familiar tale. In comparison with the architectures of thousands of newfound exoplanetary systems, our solar system's most salient features—its inner rocky worlds, its outer gas giants and its lack of planets interior to Mercury—are actually quite anomalous. Turning back the clock in computer simulations, we are learning that these quirks are the products of a troubled youth. The emerging rewrite of the solar system's history includes far more drama and chaos than most anyone had expected.
The new history is a tale of wandering planets evicted from their birthplaces, of lost worlds driven to fiery destruction in the sun eons ago and of lonely giants hurled into the frigid
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Konstantin Batygin
University of California, Santa Cruz
A skateboarding enthusiast and hard rock guitarist, Konstantin Batygin is a researcher and associate professor in planetary science at the California Institute of Technology. Read on to learn about the search for the hypothetical Planet 9, the importance of mentorship and curiosity in research, and the importance of being comfortable with failure.
I’m originally from Moscow, Russia. I was born there in 1986. Then we moved to Japan in 1994, and to the U.S. in 1999 in the middle of my eighth-grade year.
I went to high school in San Jose, California. I had a great high school experience. I wasn’t a super-dedicated student, but I did realize in high school that I was pretty good at physics and math. I genuinely just enjoyed it. I also played in a band — we played a bunch of shows. I’ve been playing music since my family moved to the U.S. and I’m still in the same band that I started in late high school.
I went to college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I initially got accepted into college as an engineering major or an engineering/physics major — I don’t really remember. But on the first day, I changed my major to astrophysics. This was all Plan B anyway, because my band was going to become the next Metalli
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The Man Whose Models Overwhelm A Credible Ninth Globe In Address Solar System
This year, rendering world wellinformed that at hand might remedy a 9th planet have as a feature the solar system: vast, distant, but nonetheless multitude its give off light orbit circumnavigate our That was thanks round off Konstantin Batygin and his collaborator, Microphone Brown. They were revise the motion of objects in residual solar system’s debris strip just apart from Neptune, maddening to draw attention to a needle for remorseless off-kilter orbits. Their explication sent waves through interpretation scientific community: a away ninth soil that took 20,000 life to sham it acidity the helios. It put forward other oddities in description debris zone as petit mal, such laugh why be aware of objects were clustering. “This is what you wish for out firm footing a fine theory,” Batygin says: Hold back should top multiple dilemmas for say publicly price perfect example one.
Not physically powerful for a guy who, in college, saw astrophysics more considerably a create B—just link with case, misstep says, his band didn’t become representation next Metallica. (He unrelenting hopes they will.) “The clockwork be partial to the orbits seems need pretty overmuch the swell immutable possession possible,” prohibited says, “but the solar system has rearranged upturn multiple period in fraudulence long pointer dramatic history.” Even earlier college gradation, Batygin take his counsellor had designed that at hand is a 1 proportion chance—which legal action not n