Related papers: The Interior Dynamics of Water Planets
Water-rich super-Earth exoplanets are expected to be common. We explore the effect of late giant impacts on the final bulk abundance of water in such planets. We present the results from smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of…
Understanding the internal structures of planets with a large H$_2$O component is important for the characterisation of sub-Neptune planets. The finding that the mini-Neptune K2-18b could host a liquid water ocean beneath a mostly hydrogen…
For most planets in the range of radii from 1 to 4 R$_{\oplus}$, water is a major component of the interior composition. At high pressure H${}_{2}$O can be solid, but for larger planets, like Neptune, the temperature can be too high for…
Water content and the internal evolution of terrestrial planets and icy bodies are closely linked. The distribution of water in planetary systems is controlled by the temperature structure in the protoplanetary disk and dynamics and…
We consider super-Earth sized planets which have a water mass fraction that is large enough to form an external mantle composed of high pressure water ice polymorphs and that lack a substantial H/He atmosphere. We consider such planets in…
Recently discovered exoplanets on close-in orbits should have surface temperatures of 100's to 1000's of K. They are likely tidally locked and synchronously rotating around their parent stars and, if an atmosphere is absent, have surface…
From an astrobiological point of view, special attention has been paid to the probability of habitable planets in extrasolar systems. The purpose of this study is to constrain a possible range of the mass of a terrestrial planet that can…
Water worlds have been hypothesized as an alternative to photo-evaporation in order to explain the gap in the radius distribution of Kepler exoplanets. We explore water worlds within the framework of a joint mass-radius-period distribution…
Observational advancements are leading to increasingly precise measurements of super-Earth masses and radii. Such measurements are used in internal structure models to constrain interior compositions of super-Earths. It is now critically…
Terrestrial planets in the Habitable Zone of Sun-like stars are priority targets for detection and observation by the next generation of space telescopes. Earth's long-term habitability may have been tied to the geological carbon cycle, a…
With a series of numerical simulations, we analyze the thermo-hydrodynamical evolution of circumstellar disks containing Jupiter-size protoplanets. In the framework of the two-dimensional approximation, we consider an energy equation that…
The role of water ice in the solar system is reviewed from a fluid-dynamical point of view. On Earth and Mars, water ice forms ice sheets, ice caps and glaciers at the surface, which show glacial flow under their own weight. By contrast,…
Exoplanet surveys around M dwarfs have detected a growing number of exoplanets with Earth-like insolation. It is expected that some of those planets are rocky planets with the potential for temperate climates favourable to surface liquid…
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…
Many planets in the solar system and across the galaxy have hydrogen-rich atmospheres overlying more heavy element-rich interiors with which they interact for billions of years. Atmosphere-interior interactions are thus crucial to…
Context. Planetary mass and radius data are showing a wide variety in densities of low-mass exoplanets. This includes sub-Neptunes, whose low densities can be explained with the presence of a volatile-rich layer. Water is one of the most…
Water cycling between Earth's mantle and surface has previously been modelled and extrapolated to rocky exoplanets, but these studies neglected the host star. M-dwarf stars are more common than Sun-like stars and at least as likely to host…
Astrophysical observations reveal a large diversity of radii and masses of exoplanets. It is important to characterize the interiors of exoplanets to understand planetary diversity and further determine how unique, or not, Earth is.…
The amount of surface water is thought to be critical for a planet's climate stability and thus habitability. However, the probability that a rocky planet may exhibit surface water at any point its evolution is dependent on multiple…
Topography on a wet rocky exoplanet could raise land above its sea level. Although land elevation is the product of many complex processes, the large-scale topographic features on any geodynamically-active planet are the expression of the…