ERC Starting Grant

Excerpt from the ETH Press release from 10. January 2022:

Paolo Sossi seeks to understand how the Earth and other planets formed. He combines experimental, spectroscopic and theoretical approaches to study the growth of planets from dust grains into complex bodies. In his project, he will link the composition of planets in our Solar System to the composition of their atmospheres. To this end, he will simulate miniature planets and their atmospheres in the laboratory by making spheres of magma that float on gas streams. The aim is to assess the uniqueness of Earth in the ever-​growing kaleidoscope of exoplanets and to determine the conditions under which life can arise on planets.