Related papers: Primary Initiation of Submarine Canyons
The origin of close-in Jovian planets is still elusive. We examine the in-situ gas accretion scenario as a formation mechanism of these planets. We reconstruct natal disk properties from the occurrence rate distribution of close-in giant…
The study of planets outside our solar system may lead to major advances in our understanding of the Earth, and provide insight into the universal set of rules by which planets form and evolve. To achieve these goals requires applying…
Humanity is close to characterizing the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets due to the advent of JWST. These astronomical observations motivate us to understand exoplanetary atmospheres to constrain habitability. We study the influence…
We analyze findings of the Stardust mission that brought to the Earth dust from the 81P/Wild 2 coma. Just as the data of the Deep Impact mission to 9P/Tempel 1, they are at odds with the widely accepted condensation/sublimation comet…
The discovery of many giant planets in close-in orbits and the effect of planetary and stellar tides in their subsequent orbital decay have been extensively studied in the context of planetary formation and evolution theories. Planets…
The ability of a planet to maintain surface water, key to life as we know it, depends on solar and planetary energy. As a star ages, it delivers more energy to a planet. As a planet ages it produces less internal heat, which leads to…
Close-in giant planets (e.g. ``Hot Jupiters'') are thought to form far from their host stars and migrate inward, through the terrestrial planet zone, via torques with a massive gaseous disk. Here we simulate terrestrial planet growth during…
Recent discoveries of strongly misaligned transiting exoplanets pose a challenge to the established planet formation theory which assumes planetary systems to form and evolve in isolation. However, the fact that the majority of stars…
We hypothesise that planets are made by tidal downsizing of migrating giant planet embryos. The proposed scheme for planet formation consists of these steps: (i) a massive young protoplanetary disc fragments at R ~ several tens to hundreds…
Earth-sized planets were observed in close-in orbits around M dwarfs. While more and more planets are expected to be uncovered around M dwarfs, theories of their formation and dynamical evolution are still in their infancy. We investigate…
Although current sensitivity limits are such that true Solar System analogs remain challenging to detect, numerous planetary systems have been discovered that are very different from our own Solar System. The majority of systems harbor a…
The core accretion mechanism is presently the most widely accepted cause of the formation of giant planets. For simplicity, most models presently assume that the growth of planetary embryos occurs in isolation. We explore how the…
Recent discoveries of extrasolar planets at small orbital radii, or with significant eccentricities, indicate that interactions between massive planets and the disks of gas and dust from which they formed are vital for determining the final…
In the hot-start core accretion formation model for gas giants, the interior of a planet is usually assumed to be fully convective. By calculating the detailed internal evolution of a planet assuming hot start outer boundary conditions, we…
The Capture Theory gives planet production through a tidal interaction between a condensed star and a diffuse protostar within a dense embedded cluster. Initial extensive and highly eccentric planetary orbits round-off and decay in a…
Small planets ($\sim$1--3.9 $\Rearth$) constitute more than half of the inventory of the 4000-plus exoplanets discovered so far. Smaller planets are sufficiently dense to be rocky, but those with radii larger than $\sim$1.6 $\Rearth$ are…
The fate of surface water on Venus is one of the most important outstanding problems in comparative planetology. Here a new concept is proposed to explain water removal on a steam-covered proto Venus, referred to as impact-driven planetary…
Giant planets are tens to thousands of times as massive as the Earth, and many times as large. Most of their volumes are occupied by hydrogen and helium, the primary constituents of the protostellar disks from which they formed.…
During planet formation, a gas giant will interact with smaller protoplanets that stray within its sphere of gravitational influence. We investigate the outcome of interactions between gas giants and terrestrial-sized protoplanets with…
In the nucleated instability picture of gas giant formation, the final stage is the rapid accretion of a massive gas envelope by a solid core, bringing about a tenfold or more increase in mass. This tends to trigger the scattering of any…