Related papers: Primary Initiation of Submarine Canyons
More than two dozen short-period Jupiter-mass gas giant planets have been discovered around nearby solar-type stars in recent years, several of which undergo transits, making them ideal for the detection and characterization of their…
The terrestrial planets are believed to have formed by violent collisions of tens of lunar- to Mars-size protoplanets at time t<200 Myr after the protoplanetary gas disk dispersal (t_0). The solar system giant planets rapidly formed during…
Interior to the gaseous envelopes of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, there are high-density cores with masses larger than 10 Earth masses. According to the conventional sequential accretion hypothesis, such massive cores are needed for the…
Newly-formed planetary systems with ages of <10 Myr offer many unique insights into the formation, evolution, and fundamental properties of extrasolar planets. These planets have fallen beyond the limits of past surveys, but as we enter the…
The presence of an early-formed giant planet in the protoplanetary disk has mixed influence on the growth of other planetary embryos. Gravitational perturbation from the planet can increase the relative velocities of planetesimals at the…
Recent analyses have shown that the concluding stages of giant planet formation are accompanied by the development of large-scale meridional flow of gas inside the planetary Hill sphere. This circulation feeds a circumplanetary disk that…
The origin of close-in giant planets is a key open question in planet formation theory. The two leading models are (i) formation at the outer disk followed by migration and (ii) in situ formation. In this work we determine the atmospheric…
The determination of Saturn's atmospheric noble gas abundances are critical to understanding the formation and evolution of Saturn, and giant planets in general. These measurements can only be performed with an entry probe. A Saturn probe…
Massive planetary cores embedded in protoplanetary discs are believed to accrete extended atmospheres, providing a pathway to forming gas giants and gas-rich super-Earths. The properties of these atmospheres strongly depend on the nature of…
Terrestrial-like exoplanets may obtain atmospheres from three primary sources: Capture of nebular gases, degassing during accretion, and degassing from subsequent tectonic activity. Here we model degassing during accretion to estimate the…
Massive cores of the giant planets are thought to have formed in a gas disk by accretion of pebble-size particles whose accretional cross-section is enhanced by aerodynamic gas drag [1][2]. A commonly held view is that the terrestrial…
The goal of planet formation as a field of study is not only to provide the understanding of how planets come into existence. It is also an interdisciplinary bridge which links astronomy to geology and mineralogy. Recent observations of…
Aims: The long-term carbon cycle for planets with a surface entirely covered by oceans works differently from that of the present-day Earth because inefficient erosion leads to a strong dependence of the weathering rate on the rate of…
The Galileo mission to Jupiter discovered magnetic signatures associated with hidden sub-surface oceans at the moons Europa and Callisto using the phenomenon of magnetic induction. These induced magnetic fields originate from electrically…
Approximately half of the planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission are in systems where just a single planet transits its host star, and the remaining planets are observed to be in multi-planet systems. Recent analyses have reported a…
Super-Earths are the most abundant planets known to date and are characterized by having sizes between that of Earth and Neptune, typical orbital periods of less than 100 days and gaseous envelopes that are often massive enough to…
Magma ocean crystallisation sets up the early structure and long-term evolution of terrestrial planets. Recent seismic evidence signals the presence of a silicate layer at the base of Mars' mantle. Magma-ocean crystallisation and subsequent…
Simple scalings suggest that super-Earths are more likely than an equivalent Earth-sized planet to be undergoing plate tectonics. Generally, viscosity and thermal conductivity increase with pressure while thermal expansivity decreases,…
Many exoplanets in close-in orbits are observed to have relatively high eccentricities and large stellar obliquities. We explore the possibility that these result from planet-planet scattering by studying the dynamical outcomes from a large…
(Abridged) Giant planets are observed orbiting the primary stars of close binary systems. Such planets may have formed in compact circumprimary disks, under conditions much different than those around single stars. To quantify the effects…