Related papers: Tails of a Recent Comet
The processes that led to the formation of the planetary bodies in the Solar System are still not fully understood. Using the results obtained with the comprehensive suite of instruments on-board ESA's Rosetta mission, we present evidence…
We estimated the rate of comet and asteroid collisions with the terrestrial planets by calculating the orbits of 13000 Jupiter-crossing objects (JCOs) and 1300 resonant asteroids and computing the probabilities of collisions based on…
A large fraction of white dwarfs (WDs) have metal-polluted atmospheres, which are produced by accreting material from remnant planetary systems. The composition of the accreted debris broadly resembles that of rocky Solar System objects.…
Tipping elements in the climate system are large-scale subregions of the Earth that might possess threshold behavior under global warming with large potential impacts on human societies. Here, we study a subset of five tipping elements and…
Asteroids are remnants of the material from which the Solar System formed. Fragments of asteroids, in the form of meteorites, include samples of the first solid matter to form in our Solar System 4.5 mia years ago. Spectroscopic studies of…
'Debris disks' are collections of small bodies around stars, such as the Asteroid Belt and Kuiper Belt in our Solar System. These disks are composed of objects smaller than planets, including asteroids, comets, dust, and dwarf planets. We…
The solar system is dusty, and would become dustier over time as asteroids collide and comets disintegrate, except that small debris particles in interplanetary space do not last long. They can be ejected from the solar system by Jupiter,…
The orbital evolution of particles released from the surface of a rubble-pile body by Earth's tides during flyby within the Roche limit is studied. Test particles initially placed on the surface leave the surface and escape the parent body.…
During the last stages of the terrestrial planet formation, planets grow mainly through giant-impacts with large planetary embryos. The Earth's Moon was suggested to form through one of these impacts. However, since the proto-Earth has…
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…
The striations in the dust tails of comets are referred to as striae, and their origin has long been a mystery. We introduce a new dynamic model to describe the forms of the striae observed in comets Hale-Bopp (C/1995 O1), West (C/1975 V1),…
Impacts by rocky and icy bodies are thought to have played a key role in shaping the composition of solar system objects, including the Earth's habitability. Hence, it is likely that they play a similar role in exoplanetary systems. We…
In most current debris disc models, the dynamical and the collisional evolutions are studied separately, with N-body and statistical codes, respectively, because of stringent computational constraints. We present here LIDT-DD, the first…
A new mechanism for the formation of cometary tails behind dense clouds or globules is discussed. Numerical hydrodynamical models show that when a dense shell of swept-up matter overruns a cloud, material in the shell is focussed behind the…
Turbulent coagulation in protoplanetary disks is known to operate on timescale far shorter than the lifetime of the disk. In the absence of mechanisms that replenish the small dust grain population, protoplanetary disks would rapidly lose…
Much of the Earth was built by high-energy impacts of planetesimals and embryos, many of these impactors already differentiated, with metallic cores of their own. Geochemical data provide critical information on the timing of accretion and…
Recent occurrence-rate analyses have shown that the transition between the Neptunian desert and the savanna is not smooth but instead exhibits an overdensity of planets at $P_{\rm orb}\simeq3$-$6$ d, known as the Neptunian ridge. We…
Short-period planets provide ideal laboratories for testing star-planet interaction. Planets that are smaller than $\sim$2$R_\oplus$ are considered to be largely rocky either having been stripped of or never having acquired the gaseous…
We explore the origin of phase-space substructures revealed by the second Gaia data release in the disc of the Milky Way, such as the ridges in the $V_{\phi}$-$r$ plane, the undulations in the $V_{\phi}$-$r$-$V_r$ space and the streams in…
The two dominant features in the distribution of orbital parameters for close-in exoplanets are the prevalence of circular orbits for very short periods, and the observation that planets on closer orbits tend to be heavier. The first…