Related papers: Jupiter - friend or foe? II: the Centaurs
Using numerical simulations, we show that smooth migration of the giant planets through a planetesimal disk leads to an orbital architecture that is inconsistent with the current one: the resulting eccentricities and inclinations of their…
`Hot jupiters,' giant planets with orbits very close to their parent stars, are thought to form farther away and migrate inward via interactions with a massive gas disk. If a giant planet forms and migrates quickly, the planetesimal…
The evolution of a giant planet within the stellar envelope of a main-sequence star is investigated as a possible mechanism for enhancing the stellar metallicities of the parent stars of extrasolar planetary systems. Three-dimensional…
We present the results of N--body simulations which examine the effect that gas giant planet migration has on the formation of terrestrial planets. The models incorporate a 0.5 Jupiter mass planet undergoing type II migration through an…
Seismology applied to giant planets could drastically change our understanding of their deep interiors, as it has happened with the Earth, the Sun, and many main-sequence and evolved stars. The study of giant planets' composition is…
We investigate the formation of multiple-planet systems in the presence of a hot Jupiter using extended N-body simulations that are performed simultaneously with semi-analytic calculations. Our primary aims are to describe the planet…
The weather layers of the gas giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, comprise the shallow atmospheric layers that are influenced energetically by a combination of incoming solar radiation and localised latent heating of condensates, as well as…
This paper studies the effects of dynamical interactions among the planets in observed extrasolar planetary systems, including hypothetical additional bodies, with a focus on secular perturbations. These interactions cause the…
The hundreds of exoplanets that have been discovered in the past two decades offer a new perspective on planetary structure. Instead of being the archetypal examples of planets, those of our Solar System are merely possible outcomes of…
In a recent paper we proposed that the giant planets' primordial orbits may have been eccentric (~0.05), and used a suite of dynamical simulations to show outcomes of the giant planet instability that are consistent with their present-day…
New insights into the history of the inner solar system are derived from the impact cratering record of the Moon, Mars, Venus and Mercury, and from the size distributions of asteroid populations. Old craters from a unique period of heavy…
In protoplanetary disks, sufficiently massive planets excite pressure bumps, which can then be preferred locations for forming new planet cores. We discuss how this loop may affect the architecture of multi-planet systems, and compare our…
The formation and early evolution of Jupiter played a pivotal role in sculpting the large-scale architecture of the solar system, intertwining the narrative of Jovian early years with the broader story of the solar system's origins. The…
NASA's Kepler mission identified over 4000 extrasolar planets that transit (cross in front of) their host stars. This sample has revealed detailed features in the demographics of planet sizes and orbital spacings. However, knowledge of…
Planetary rings are often speculated as being a relatively common attribute of giant planets, partly based on their prevalence within the Solar System. However, their formation and sustainability remain a topic of open discussion, and the…
The measurements of cosmic interplanetary dust by the instruments on board the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft contain the dynamical signature of dust generated by Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt objects, as well as short period Oort Cloud comets and…
The paper discusses a model of the bombardment of the Earth and the Moon by small bodies when these planets were formed. It is shown that the total ice mass delivered with the bodies to the Earth from the feeding zone of the giant planets…
The region around the H$_2$O ice line, due to its higher surface density, seems to be the ideal location to form planets. The core of Jupiter, as well as the cores of close in gas giants are thus thought to form in this region of the disk.…
Royal Society Discussion Meeting (2013) `Characterizing exoplanets'. Of the 900+ confirmed exoplanets discovered since 1995 for which we have constraints on their mass (i.e., not including Kepler candidates), 75% have masses larger than…
The giant planets were the first to form and hold the key to unveiling the solar system's formation history in their interiors and atmospheres. Furthermore, the unique conditions present in the interiors of the giant planets make them…