Related papers: Coreless Terrestrial Exoplanets
The melt productivity of a differentiated planet's mantle is primarily controlled by its iron content, which is itself approximated by the planet's core mass fraction (CMF). Here we show that estimates of an exo-planet's CMF allows robust…
Metal-rich asteroids and iron meteorites are considered core remnants of differentiated planetesimals and or products of oxygen-depleted accretion. Investigating the origins of iron-rich planetesimals could provide key insights into planet…
Planets and stars are expected to be compositionally linked because they accrete from the same material reservoir. However, astronomical observations revealed the existence of exoplanets whose bulk density is far higher than what is…
The formation of the Earth's core is a consequence of planetary accretion and processes in the Earth's interior. The mechanical process of planetary differentiation is likely to occur in large, if not global, magma oceans created by the…
Exoplanets with masses similar to that of Earth have recently been discovered in extrasolar systems. A first order question for understanding their dynamics is to know whether they possess Earth like liquid metallic cores. However, the iron…
The pathway to forming the iron-rich planet Mercury remains mysterious. Mercury's core makes up 70% of the planetary mass, which implies a significant enrichment of iron relative to silicates, while its mantle is strongly depleted in…
We use new interior models of cold planets to investigate the mass-radius relationships of solid exoplanets, considering planets made primarily of iron, silicates, water, and carbon compounds. We find that the mass-radius relationships for…
With seven temperate Earth-sized planets revolving around an ultracool red dwarf, the nearby TRAPPIST-1 system offers a unique opportunity to verify models of exoplanet composition, differentiation, and interior structure. In particular,…
The improved description of the planets' interior is provided. We examine the modified gravity effects on the Earth-like planets composed of the iron core and silicate mantle. We confirm that the mass-radius relations, as well as density…
Chondrites, the building blocks of the terrestrial planets, have mass and atomic proportions of oxygen, iron, magnesium, and silicon totaling $\geq$90\% and variable Mg/Si ($\sim$25\%), Fe/Si (factor of $\geq$2), and Fe/O (factor of…
Discovery of only handful of exoplanets required to establish a correlation between giant planet occurrence and metallicity of their host stars. More than 20 years have already passed from that discovery, however, many questions are still…
Terrestrial planets form in a series of dynamical steps from the solid component of circumstellar disks. First, km-sized planetesimals form likely via a combination of sticky collisions, turbulent concentration of solids, and gravitational…
The positive correlation between planet detection rate and host star iron abundance lends strong support to the core accretion theory of planet formation. However, iron is not the most significant mass contributor to the cores of giant…
Some exoplanets have much higher densities than expected from stellar abundances of planet-forming elements. There are two theories - metal-rich formation hypothesis and naked core hypothesis - that explain how formation and evolution can…
The Earth, Venus, Mars, and some extrasolar terrestrial planets have a mass and radius that is consistent with a mass fraction of about 30% metallic core and 70% silicate mantle. At the inner frontier of the solar system, Mercury has a…
A rapidly growing body of observational results suggests that planet formation takes place preferentially at high metallicity. In the core accretion model of planet formation this is expected because heavy elements are needed to form the…
We explore two ways in which objects of planetary masses can form. One is in disk systems like the solar system. The other is in dense clusters where stars and brown dwarfs form. We do not yet have the instrumental accuracy to detect…
Mercury's high uncompressed mass density suggests that the planet is largely composed of iron, either bound within metal (mainly Fe-Ni), or iron sulfide. Recent results from the MESSENGER mission to Mercury imply a low temperature history…
In order to characterize giant exoplanets and better understand their origin, knowledge of how the planet's composition depends on its mass and stellar environment is required. In this work, we simulate the thermal evolution of gaseous…
In order to test planetary accretion and differentiation scenarios, we integrated a multistage core-mantle differentiation model with N-body accretion simulations. Impacts between embryos and planetesimals result in magma ocean formation…