Related papers: How Common are Extrasolar, Late Heavy Bombardments…

Clouds form on extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs where lightning could occur. Lightning is a tracer of atmospheric convection, cloud formation and ionization processes as known from the Solar System, and may be significant for the…

Material from the surface of a planet can be ejected into space by a large impact, and could carry primitive life forms with it. We performed n-body simulations of such ejecta to determine where in the Solar System rock from Earth and Mars…

Many of the multi-planet systems discovered to date have been notable for their compactness, with neighbouring planets closer together than any in the Solar System. Interestingly, planet-hosting stars have a wide range of ages, suggesting…

Noble metals and gases are very sensitive to the late accretion to the Earth of asteroids and comets. We present mass balance arguments based on these elements that indicate that 0.7E22-2.7E22 kg of extraterrestrial bodies struck the Earth…

The population of the Kuiper Belt within 50 AU of the Sun has likely been severely depleted by gravitational perturbations from the giant planets, particularly Neptune. The density of Kuiper Belt objects is expected to be two orders of…

Recent studies have shown that the local environment of the Sun is a complex one with the presence of several supernova shock bubbles and interstellar clouds. Even within this environment, the Sun is moving with a velocity of about 15 km/s…

We study the occurrence of magnetic storms in space age (1957-2021) using Dst and Dxt indices. We find 2526/2743 magnetic storms in the Dxt/Dst index, out of which 45% are weak, 40% moderate, 12% intense and 3% major storms. Occurrence of…

The most dramatic phases of terrestrial planet formation are thought to be oligarchic and chaotic growth, on timescales of up to 100-200 Myr, when violent impacts occur between large planetesimals of sizes up to proto-planets. Such events…

It has been suggested that galactic shock asymmetry induced by our galaxy's infall toward the Virgo Cluster may be a source of periodicity in cosmic ray exposure as the solar system oscillates perpendicular to the galactic plane. Here we…

We develop a semi-analytical model for computing planetary system formation with the aim of explaining the observed diversity of planetary systems architectures and relate this primordial diversity with the initial properties of the disc…

We study the long-term evolution of massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) at the centers of galaxies using detailed full three-body scattering experiments. Stars, drawn from a distribution unbound to the binary, are ejected by the…

Most observed extrasolar planets have masses similar to, but orbits very different from, the gas giants of our solar system. Many are much closer to their parent stars than would have been expected and their orbits are often rather…

Primordial black holes (PBHs) remain a viable dark matter candidate in the asteroid-mass range. We point out that in this scenario, the PBH abundance would be large enough for at least one object to cross through the inner Solar System per…

The solar system's Oort cloud can be perturbed by the Galactic tide and by individual passing stars. These perturbations can inject Oort cloud objects into the inner parts of the solar system, where they may be observed as the long-period…

In this review, three major changes in our understanding of the early history of the Solar System are presented. 1) Early differentiation: A few recent results support the idea that protoplanet formation and differentiation occurred partly…

Advances in the discovery and characterization of asteroids over the past decade have revealed an unanticipated underlying structure that points to a dramatic early history of the inner Solar System. The asteroids in the main asteroid belt…

High-energy astrophysical events, particularly Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs), have been proposed as significant contributors to mass extinction events on Earth-like planets in most of the galaxy, internal to our radius in it. This paper examines…

Elliptical galaxies have dynamically hot ($\sigma_{1D}$ ~ 100 -- 300 km s$^{-1}$) populations of stars, and presumably, smaller objects like comets. Because interstellar minor bodies are moving much faster, they hit planets harder and more…

Several properties of the Solar System, including the wide radial spacing and orbital eccentricities of giant planets, can be explained if the early Solar System evolved through a dynamical instability followed by migration of planets in…

Most stars form in clusters where relatively close encounters with other stars are common and can leave imprints on the orbital architecture of planetary systems. In this paper, we investigate the inclination excitation of debris disk…