Konstantin Batygin
Konstantin Batygin in 2022
Born
Konstantin Yuryevich Batygin

(1986-03-23) 23 March 1986 (age 37)
Moscow, RSFSR, Soviet Union
NationalityRussian, American
EducationUniversity of California, Santa Cruz, California Institute of Technology
Known forPlanet Nine
SpouseOlga A. Batygin (née Mishina)[1][2][3][4]
ChildrenA daughter (born 2012)[5]
Scientific career
FieldsPlanetary astronomy
Websiteweb.gps.caltech.edu/~kbatygin

Konstantin Batygin (Russian: Константи́н Юрьевич Батыгин) is an American astronomer and Professor of Planetary Sciences at Caltech.[6][7]

Early life

Konstantin Batygin was born in Moscow, Soviet Union.[5] His father, Yuri Konstantinovich Batygin, worked as an accelerator physicist in the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute until 1994, when he moved along with his wife Galina[8] and their family to Wakō, Japan, and began working at the particle accelerator facility in RIKEN.[5] There, Konstantin graduated from a public Japanese elementary school, later attending a Russian embassy-based school and studying the martial art Gōjū-ryū.[5]

In late 1999, at age 13,[9] Konstantin Batygin moved to Morgan Hill, California,[10] along with his family. He chose to attend the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) for the beach and the chance to keep playing in his rock band, The Seventh Season.[5][11] During his sophomore year as an undergraduate, he met Gregory P. Laughlin, and afterwards they began working together on the Solar System’s long-term dynamical evolution.[5] In June 2008, he graduated with a B.S. degree in Astrophysics,[10] winning the Loren Steck Award for his thesis, "The Dynamical Stability of the Solar System".[8] Batygin subsequently obtained a Ph.D. degree in Planetary Science in 2012 from California Institute of Technology.

Career

Batygin's research is primarily aimed at understanding the formation and evolution of planetary systems. In 2010, he and David J. Stevenson published a calculation,[12] which showed that hot Jupiters can become inflated as a consequence of Ohmic dissipation of electrical currents induced through an interaction between ionized atmospheric winds and the planetary magnetic field. In 2012, Batygin demonstrated that misalignments between stellar spin-axes and planetary orbits can arise from gravitational perturbations exerted onto protoplanetary disks by primordial companions stars.[13] In 2015, Batygin and Laughlin hypothesized that the Solar System once possessed a population of short-period planets that were destroyed by Jupiter's migration through the solar nebula.[14] In January 2016, Batygin and Michael E. Brown proposed the existence of a ninth planet in the Solar System.[11] In 2018, Batygin showed that the evolution of astrophysical disks can be modeled with the Schrödinger equation, a fundamental equation in quantum mechanics.[15] He has appeared as himself in multiple television documentaries including the NOVA 2019 miniseries The Planets.[16]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Faculty Footnotes: Konstantin Batygin". Engineering & Science. California Institute of Technology. 10 June 2015. Retrieved 28 January 2016.
  2. ^ Olga Batygin. "Outreach, gender, and science: my personal thoughts". LinkedIn. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  3. ^ "Olga A. Batygin". caltech.edu. Archived from the original on 11 February 2016. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  4. ^ "Olga Batygin". radaris.com. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Batygin, Konstantin. "About Me". gps.caltech.edu. Retrieved 22 January 2016.
  6. ^ Batygin, Konstantin. "Home". gps.caltech.edu. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  7. ^ Greenwood, Veronique; Willyard, Cassandra (7 September 2016). "The Man Whose Models Revealed A Possible Ninth Planet In Our Solar System". Popular Science. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  8. ^ a b "Undergraduate awards ceremony caps annual Student Achievement Week". news.ucsc.edu. University of California Santa Cruz. 9 June 2008. Retrieved 28 January 2016.
  9. ^ Hedgecock, Sarah (5 January 2015). "30 Under 30: Young Scientists Who Are Changing The World". Forbes. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  10. ^ a b Stephens, Tim (9 June 2008). "Study by UCSC undergrad shows a solar system gone wild". news.ucsc.edu. University of California Santa Cruz. Retrieved 28 January 2016.
  11. ^ a b Hand, Eric (20 January 2016). "Astronomers say a Neptune-sized planet lurks beyond Pluto". Science. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  12. ^ Batygin, Konstantin; Stevenson, David J. (1 January 2010). "Inflating Hot Jupiters with Ohmic Dissipation". The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 714 (2): L238. arXiv:1002.3650. Bibcode:2010ApJ...714L.238B. doi:10.1088/2041-8205/714/2/L238. ISSN 2041-8205. S2CID 13242980.
  13. ^ Batygin, Konstantin (2012). "A primordial origin for misalignments between stellar spin axes and planetary orbits". Nature. 491 (7424): 418–420. arXiv:1304.5166. Bibcode:2012Natur.491..418B. doi:10.1038/nature11560. PMID 23151584. S2CID 4398702.
  14. ^ Feltman, Rachel (23 March 2015). "Jupiter might have wrecked the first version of our solar system". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2016-08-02.
  15. ^ Mandelbaum, Ryan F. (5 March 2018). "Fundamental Equation of Quantum Physics Also Describes Rings and Disks in Space". Gizmodo. Retrieved 2018-03-05.
  16. ^ "Konstantin Batygin". IMDb. Retrieved 16 May 2021.

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