Related papers: Comet 9P/Tempel 1: Interpretation with the Deep Im…
We briefly review and update our earlier published model for dark matter consisting of nanometer size bubbles of a new speculated vacuum phase in which some ordinary material, e.g. carbon, is present under high pressure caused by the…
Sub-Neptunes with substantial atmospheres may possess magma oceans in contact with the overlying gas, with chemical interactions between the atmosphere and magma playing an important role in shaping atmospheric composition. Early JWST…
Optical properties are required for the correct understanding and modelling of protoplanetary and debris discs. By assuming that comets are the most pristine bodies in the solar system, our goal is to derive optical constants of real…
Tidal stripping of dark matter from subhalos falling into the Milky Way produces narrow, cold tidal streams as well as more spatially extended "debris flows" in the form of shells, sheets, and plumes. Here we focus on the debris flow in the…
The first stage of planet formation is the accumulation of dust and ice grains into mm-cm-sized pebbles. These pebbles can clump together through the streaming instability and form gravitationally bound pebble 'clouds'. Pebbles inside such…
Infrared (IR) observations of core collapse supernovae (CCSNe) have been used to infer the mass of dust that has formed in their ejecta. A plot of inferred dust masses versus supernova (SN) ages shows a trend of increasing dust mass with…
The evolution and structure of sub-Neptunes may be strongly influenced by interactions between the outer gaseous envelope of the planet and a surface magma ocean. However, given the wide variety of permissible interior structures of these…
Direct detection dark matter experiments, lead by the CDMS collaboration, have placed increasingly stronger constraints on the cross sections for elastic scattering of WIMPs on nucleons. These results impact the prospects for the indirect…
The impact heat accumulated during the late stage of planetary accretion can melt a significant part or even the entire mantle of a terrestrial body, giving rise to a global magma ocean. [...] Assuming fractional crystallization of the…
Several lines of evidence, from isotopic analyses of meteorites to studies of the Sun's elemental and isotopic composition, indicate that the solar system was contaminated early in its evolution by ejecta from a nearby supernova (SN).…
The deuterium enrichment in molecules in dark molecular cloud cores and starforming regions is usually attributed to gas-phase chemistry. Here we examine the effects of surface and mantle chemical reactions on the deuteration of species. We…
We model dust formation in the core collapse supernova explosion SN 1987A by treating the gas-phase formation of dust grain nuclei as a chemical process. To compute the synthesis of fourteen species of grains we integrate a non-equilibrium…
I present recent high-resolution submillimeter and millimeter observations of molecular gas and dust in some mergers, luminous galaxy nuclei, and possible mergers. Such observations tell us the behavior and properties of interstellar medium…
Comets are primitive objects that formed in the protoplanetary disk, and have been largely preserved over the history of the Solar System. However, they are not pristine, and surfaces of cometary nuclei do evolve. In order to understand the…
It is known that the millimeter dust thermal emission of protoplanetary disks is affected by scattering, such that for optically thick disks the emission decreases with respect to the pure absorption case and the spectral indices can reach…
Dust particles in orbit around a star drift toward the central star by the Poynting-Robertson effect and pile up by sublimation. We analytically derive the pile-up magnitude, adopting a simple model for optical cross sections. As a result,…
Atmospheric and solar neutrinos scattering coherently off target nuclei will be an important background source for the next generation of direct dark matter searches. In this work we focus on calcium tungstate as target material. For…
Spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are sensitive to energy injection by exotic physics in the early universe. The proposed Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE) mission has the raw sensitivity to provide…
We present an analysis of thermal emission from comet 162P/Siding Spring (P/2004 TU12) measured during its discovery apparition in 2004 December. The comet showed no dust coma at this time, so we have sampled emission from the comet's…
On January 18-19 and June 28-29 of 2010, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft imaged the Rosetta mission target, comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. We present a preliminary analysis of the images, which provide a…