Related papers: Jupiter - friend or foe? I: the asteroids
Through its connection with HED meteorites, Vesta is known as one of the first bodies to have accreted and differentiated in the Solar Nebula, predating the formation of Jupiter and surviving the violent evolution of the early Solar System.…
A giant impact has been proposed as a possible formation mechanism for Jupiter's dilute core -- the planet's inferred internal structure in which the transition between its core of heavy elements and its predominantly hydrogen-helium…
We have explored the evolution of a cold debris disk under the gravitational influence of dwarf planet sized objects (DPs), both in the presence and absence of an interior giant planet. Through detailed long-term numerical simulations, we…
The search for habitable planets like Earth around other stars fulfils an ancient imperative to understand our origins and place in the cosmos. The past decade has seen the discovery of hundreds of planets, but nearly all are gas giants…
The orbital evolution of Jupiter-family comets (JFCs), resonant asteroids, and asteroidal, trans-Neptunian, and cometary dust particles under the gravitational influence of planets was integrated. For dust particles we also considered…
The orbital structure of the asteroid belt holds a record of the Solar System's dynamical history. The current belt only contains ${\rm \sim 10^{-3}}$ Earth masses yet the asteroids' orbits are dynamically excited, with a large spread in…
Giant impacts, the collisions between planetary embryos, play a crucial role in sculpting the planets and their orbital architectures. Numerical simulations have advanced our understanding of these events, enabling estimations of mass and…
The existence of giant planets on wide orbits ($\stackrel{>}{_\sim}100$AU) challenge planet formation theories; the core accretion scenario has difficulty in forming them, whereas the disc instability model forms an overabundance of them…
We investigate the distribution of encounter velocities and impact angles describing collisions in the habitable zone of the early planetary system. Here we present a catalogue of collision characteristics for a particular mass ratio of the…
Numerous decameter-sized asteroids have been observed impacting Earth as fireballs. These objects can have impact energies equivalent to hundreds of kilotons of TNT, posing a hazard if they impact populated areas. Previous estimates of…
Most stars form in a clustered environment. Both single and binary stars will sometimes encounter planetary systems in such crowded environments. Encounter rates for binaries may be larger than for single stars, even for binary fractions as…
The orbital architecture of the Solar System is thought to have been sculpted by a dynamical instability among the giant planets. During the instability a primordial outer disk of planetesimals was destabilized and ended up on…
Impacts may have had a significant effect on the atmospheric chemistry of the early Earth. Reduced phases in the impactor (e.g., metallic iron) can reduce the planet's H$_2$O inventory to produce massive atmospheres rich in H$_2$. Whilst…
The modestly eccentric and non-coplanar orbits of the giant planets pose a challenge to solar system formation theories which generally indicate that the giant planets emerged from the protoplanetary disk in nearly perfectly circular and…
Observed Hot Jupiters exhibit a wide range of physical properties. For a given mass, many planets have inflated radii, while others are surprisingly compact and may harbor large central cores. Motivated by the observational sample, this…
In most extrasolar planetary systems, the present orbits of known giant planets admit the existence of stable terrestrial planets. Those same giant planets, however, have typically eccentric orbits that hint at violent early dynamics less…
Most of the properties of the Earth-Moon system can be explained by a collision between a planetary embryo and the growing Earth late in the accretion process. Simulations show that most of the material that eventually aggregates to form…
Pressure is a key parameter in the physics and chemistry of planet formation and evolution. Previous studies have erroneously assumed that internal pressures monotonically increase with the mass of a body. Using smoothed particle…
The Earth-Moon system is suggested to have formed through a single giant collision, in which the Moon accreted from the impact-generated debris disk. However, such giant impacts are rare, and during its evolution the Earth experienced many…
The terrestrial planets are believed to have formed by violent collisions of tens of lunar- to Mars-size protoplanets at time t<200 Myr after the protoplanetary gas disk dispersal (t_0). The solar system giant planets rapidly formed during…