Related papers: Jupiter - friend or foe? II: the Centaurs
The orbital evolution and stability of planetary systems with interaction from the belts is studied using the standard phase-plane analysis. In addition to the fixed point which corresponds to the Keplerian orbit, there are other fixed…
Collisions are one of the key processes shaping planetary systems. Asteroid families are outcomes of such collisions still identifiable across our solar system. The families provide a unique view of catastrophic disruption phenomena and…
The orbital evolution of about 20000 Jupiter-crossing objects and 1500 resonant asteroids under the gravitational influence of planets was investigated. The rate of their collisions with the terrestrial planets was estimated by computing…
We present a wide-ranging but in-depth analysis of Centaurs, focusing on their physical and structural aspects. Centaurs, originating from the Scattered Disk and Kuiper Belt, play a crucial role in our understanding of Solar System…
The short period Jupiter family comets (JFCs) are thought to originate in the Kuiper Belt; specifically, a dynamical subclass of the Kuiper Belt known as the `scattered disk' is argued to be the dominant source of JFCs. However, the best…
The fact that the Centaurs are the primary source of the Short Period Comets is well established. However, the origin of the Centaurs themselves is still under some debate, with a variety of different source reservoirs being proposed in the…
The apparent regularity of the motion of the giant planets of our solar system suggested for decades that said planets formed onto orbits similar to the current ones and that nothing dramatic ever happened during their lifetime. The…
Torques from a mutually inclined perturber can change a transiting planet's impact parameter, resulting in variations in the transit shape and duration. Detection of and upper limits on changes in impact parameter yield valuable constraints…
Recent studies of solar system formation suggest that the solar system's giant planets formed and migrated in the protoplanetary disk to reach resonant orbits with all planets inside 15 AU from the Sun. After the gas disk's dispersal,…
Although debris disks may be common in exoplanet systems, only a few systems are known in which debris disks and planets coexist. Planets and the surrounding stellar population can have a significant impact on debris disk evolution. Here we…
We consider the origin of compact, short-period, Jupiter-mass planets. We propose that their diverse structure is caused by giant impacts of embryos and super-Earths or mergers with other gas giants during the formation and evolution of…
The cratering record on the Earth and Moon shows that our planet has been exposed to high velocity impacts for much or all of its existence. Some of these craters were produced by the impact of long period comets (LPCs). These probably…
In about 6 Giga years our Sun will evolve into a red giant and finally end its life as a white dwarf. This stellar metamorphosis will occur to virtually all known host stars of exo-planetary systems and is therefore crucial for their final…
In a planetary system with two or more well-spaced, eccentric, inclined planets, secular interactions may lead to chaos. The innermost planet may gradually become very eccentric and/or inclined, as a result of the secular degrees of freedom…
Jupiter's banded appearance may appear unchanging to the casual observer, but closer inspection reveals a dynamic, ever-changing system of belts and zones with distinct cycles of activity. Identification of these long-term cycles requires…
About 25 per cent of `hot Jupiters' (extrasolar Jovian-mass planets with close-in orbits) are actually orbiting counter to the spin direction of the star. Perturbations from a distant binary star companion can produce high inclinations, but…
The discovery of high incidence of hot Jupiters in dense clusters challenges the field-based hot Jupiter formation theory. In dense clusters, interactions between planetary systems and flyby stars are relatively common. This has a…
Analyses of exoplanet statistics suggest a trend of giant planet occurrence with host star mass, a clue to how planets like Jupiter form. One missing piece of the puzzle is the occurrence around late K dwarf stars (masses of 0.5-0.75Msun…
The discovery of planetary systems outside of the solar system has challenged some of the tenets of planetary formation. Among the difficult-to-explain observations, are systems with a giant planet orbiting a very-low mass star, such as the…
We explore the long-term evolution of a bias-free orbital representation of the cometary nuclei (with diameters above 2 km) of the Kuiper belt, using the so-called L7 synthetic model from CFEPS, which consists of three dynamical…