Related papers: How common are Earth-Moon planetary systems?
Dozens of habitable zone, approximately earth-sized exoplanets are known today. An emerging frontier of exoplanet studies is identifying which of these habitable zone, small planets are actually habitable (have all necessary conditions for…
We examine the effects that planetary encounters have on the moon systems of ejected gas giant planets. We conduct a suite of numerical simulations of planetary systems containing three Jupiter-mass planets (with the innermost planet at 3…
Evidence in the Solar System suggests that the giant planets underwent an epoch of radial migration that was very rapid, with an e-folding timescale shorter than 1~Myr. It is probable that the cause of this migration was that the giant…
Giant impacts dominate the final stages of terrestrial planet formation and set the configuration and compositions of the final system of planets. A giant impact is believed to be responsible for the formation of Earth's Moon, but the…
We show that interaction with a gas disk may produce young planetary systems with closely-spaced orbits, stabilized by mean-motion resonances between neighbors. On longer timescales, after the gas is gone, interaction with a remnant…
The search for habitable planets like Earth around other stars fulfils an ancient imperative to understand our origins and place in the cosmos. The past decade has seen the discovery of hundreds of planets, but nearly all are gas giants…
We report the conditional occurrences between three planetary types: super-Earths (m sin i $<$ 10 M$_\oplus$, P $<$ 100 days), warm Jupiters (m sin i $>$ 95 $M_\oplus$, 10 $<$ P $<$ 100 days), and cold Jupiters (m sin i $>$ 95 M$_\oplus$, P…
Compared to the giant planets in the solar system, exoplanets have many remarkable properties such as the prevalence of giant planets on eccentric orbits and the presence of hot Jupiters. Planet-planet scattering (PPS) between giant planets…
The search for satellites around exoplanets represents one of the greatest challenges in advancing the characterization of planetary systems. Currently, we can only detect massive satellites, which resemble additional planetary companions…
Determining planetary habitability is a complex matter, as the interplay between a planet's physical and atmospheric properties with stellar insolation has to be studied in a self consistent manner. Standardized atmospheric models for…
Star-planet interactions play, among other things, a crucial role in planetary orbital configurations by circularizing orbits, aligning the star and planet spin and synchronizing stellar rotation with orbital motions. This is especially…
Gas giant planets are far easier than terrestrial planets to detect around other stars, and are thought to form much more quickly than terrestrial planets. Thus, in systems with giant planets, the late stages of terrestrial planet formation…
One of the primary surprises of exoplanet detections has been the discovery of compact planetary systems, whereby numerous planets reside within ~0.5 AU of the host star. Many of these kinds of systems have been discovered in recent years,…
Disk material has been observed around both components of some young close binary star systems. It has been shown that if planets form at the right places within such disks, they can remain dynamically stable for very long times. Herein, we…
The apparent regularity of the motion of the giant planets of our solar system suggested for decades that said planets formed onto orbits similar to the current ones and that nothing dramatic ever happened during their lifetime. The…
Asteroid impacts with the Earth may have played an essential role in the emergence of life on Earth through their creation of favorable niches for life, changes to the atmosphere and delivery of water. Consequently, we suggest two potential…
The statistical properties of planets in binaries were investigated. Any difference to planets orbiting single stars can shed light on the formation and evolution of planetary systems. As planets were found around components of binaries…
Prior work has found that a variety of terrestrial planetary compositions are expected to occur within known extrasolar planetary systems. However, such studies ignored the effects of giant planet migration, which is thought to be very…
In the standard model of terrestrial planet formation, planets are formed through giant impacts of planetary embryos after the dispersal of the protoplanetary gas disc. Traditionally, $N$-body simulations have been used to investigate this…
Migration of bodies under the gravitational influence of almost formed planets was studied, and probabilities of their collisions with the Earth and other terrestrial planets were calculated. Based on the probabilities, several conclusions…