Speaker: George Helffrich, (ELSI, Tokyo Institute of Technology)
Title: Planetary accretion and core formation from a thermodynamic perspective
Abstract: 
The presence of a metallic core at the centre of a silicate crust and mantle are the characteristic features of rocky planets.  Due to the technological importance of metals and ceramics in Earth's civilization and humanity's tendency to inhabit land areas on the planet, a lot is known about the detailed chemical behaviour of metal and silicates.  In this talk, I summarize the sources of this knowledge and show how to use it to understand processes occurring during planetary formation and in early Earth times.  Two detailed examples that I'll show you concern the Earth's core formation process and Mercury's core and mantle interaction during accretion.  What these studies imply is that planetary cores eat up and then spit out elements from their mantles, and that a planet's surface compositions gets branded by its core and tells a story about how it formed.
Background reading: 
-	Helffrich, G., Hirose, K., Nomura, R., Thermodynamical Modeling of Liquid Fe-Si-Mg-O:Molten Magnesium Silicate Release from the Core, Geophys. Res. Lett., v.47, doi:10.1029/2020GL089218, 2020.
-	Helffrich, G., Brasser, R., Shahar, A., The chemical case for Mercury mantle stripping, Prog. Earth Planet. Sci., v.6, 66ff, 2019.