Related papers: Collisional Evolution of Irregular Satellite Swarm…
The Sun and >15 percent of nearby stars are surrounded by dusty debris disks that must be collisionally replenished by asteroids and comets, as the dust would otherwise be depleted on <10 Myr timescales (ref. 1). Theoretical studies show…
Using ISO-ISOPHOT we carried out a survey of almost 150 stars to search for evidence of emission from dust orbiting young main sequence stars, both in clusters and isolated systems. Over half of the detections are new examples of dusty…
Observational surveys for extrasolar planets probe the diverse outcomes of planet formation and evolution. These surveys measure the frequency of planets with different masses, sizes, orbital characteristics, and host star properties. Small…
The small class of known stars with unusually warm, dusty debris disks is a key sample to probe in order to understand cascade models and extreme collisions that likely lead to the final configurations of planetary systems. Because of its…
We develop an idealized dynamical model to predict the typical properties of outer extrasolar planetary systems, at radii beyond 5 AU. Our hypothesis is that dynamical evolution in outer planetary systems is controlled by a combination of…
The dust measured in debris disks traces the position of planetesimal belts. In our Solar System, we are also able to measure the largest planetesimals directly and can extrapolate down to make an estimate of the dust. The zodiacal dust…
There is currently debate over whether the dust content of planetary systems is stochastically regenerated or originates in planetesimal belts evolving in steady state. In this paper a simple model for the steady state evolution of debris…
Circumstantial evidence suggests that most known extra-solar planetary systems are survivors of violent dynamical instabilities. Here we explore how giant planet instabilities affect the formation and survival of terrestrial planets. We…
With the number of confirmed rocky exoplanets increasing steadily, their characterisation and the search for exoplanetary biospheres is becoming an increasingly urgent issue in astrobiology. We aim to investigate the possibility of…
The $\mu$ and $\nu$ rings of Uranus form a secondary ring-moon system with the satellites Puck, Mab,Portia, and Rosalind. These rings are tenuous and dominated by micrometric particles, which can be strongly disturbed by the solar radiation…
[Abridged] We present two deep surveys of circumstellar discs around solar-type stars at different ages carried out at 350 micron with the CSO and at 1.2 mm with the IRAM 30-m telescope. The aim of this study is to understand the evolution…
Exoplanet surveys have confirmed one of humanity's (and all teenagers') worst fears: we are weird. If our Solar System were observed with present-day Earth technology -- to put our system and exoplanets on the same footing -- Jupiter is the…
We present the results of an 850 micron JCMT/SCUBA survey for dust around 13 nearby solar mass stars. The dust mass sensitivity ranged from 0.005 to 0.16 Earth masses. Three sources were detected in the survey, one of which (HD 107146) has…
We examine the population of simply periodic orbits in the Hill problem with radiation pressure included, in order to understand the distribution of gravitationally bound dust in orbit around a planet. We study a wide range of radiation…
A clear understanding of the chemical processing of matter, as it is transferred from a molecular cloud to a planetary system, depends heavily on knowledge of the physical conditions endured by gas and dust as these accrete onto a disk and…
The dynamical features of the irregular satellites of the giant planets argue against an in-situ formation and are strongly suggestive of a capture origin. Since the last detailed investigations of their dynamics, the total number of…
Comets have been invoked in numerous studies as a potentially important source of dust and gas around stars, but none has studied the thermo-physical evolution, out-gassing rate, and dust ejection of these objects in such stellar systems.…
The dust disks observed around mature stars are evidence that plantesimals are present in these systems on spatial scales that are similar to that of the asteroids and the KBOs in the Solar System. These dust disks (a.k.a. ``debris disks'')…
By logging encounters between planetesimals and planets we compute the distribution of encounters in a numerically integrated two planet system that is migrating due to interactions with an exterior planetesimal belt. Capture of an…
Since the discovery of the first extra-solar planets, we are confronted with the puzzling diversity of planetary systems. Processes like planet radial migration in gas-disks and planetary orbital instabilities, often invoked to explain the…