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Comet disintegration proceeds both through sublimation and discrete splitting events. The cross-sectional area of material ejected by a comet may, within days, become many times greater than that of the Earth, making encounters with such…
It has long been assumed that the planet Jupiter acts as a giant shield, significantly lowering the impact rate of minor bodies upon the Earth, and thus enabling the development and evolution of life in a collisional environment which is…
We show that the boundary between quark-dominated and hadron-dominated regions of nuclear structure may be blurred by multi-nucleon quark clusters arising from color percolation. Recent experiments supporting partial percolation in cold…
The unexpected finding of a ring system around the Centaur (10199) Chariklo opened a new window for dynamical studies and posed many questions about the formation and evolutionary mechanisms of Centaurs as well as the relationship to…
Saturn's ionosphere is produced when the otherwise neutral atmosphere is exposed to a flow of energetic charged particles or solar radiation. At low latitudes the latter should result in a weak planet-wide glow in infrared (IR),…
Saturn's moon Titan exhibits remarkable parallels to the Earth in many geophysical and geological processes not found elsewhere in the solar system at the present day. These include a nitrogen atmosphere with a condensible gas - methane -…
We analyse the positions of RR Lyrae stars in the central region of the Milky Way. In addition to the overall bar shape detected previously, we find evidence for a peanut shaped structure, in form of overdensities near $\ell=-2$ deg and $1$…
The ``sub-Jovian desert" ($2{\lesssim}R_{\rm p}{\lesssim}10 \ R_{\oplus}$, periods $\lesssim$3 days) is sparsely populated but no longer empty. Recent surveys have revealed that planets residing in the desert are dense (${\rho}{\gtrsim}1$…
We investigate the structure of the Earth co-orbital region at low eccentricity and low inclination using a semi-analytical model of the 1:1 mean-motion resonance. The dynamics of asteroids in co-orbital motion with the Earth is described…
No Hadean rocks have ever been found on Earth's surface except for zircons---evidence of continental crust, suggesting that Hadean continental crust existed but later disappeared. One hypothesis for the disappearance of the continental…
A Dyson ring is a hypothetical megastructure, that a very advanced civilization would build around a star to harness more of its energy. Satellite propagation is of high priority in such a vast world where distances could very well be…
The recent discovery of rings and massive satellites around minor bodies and dwarf planets suggests that they may often coexist, as for example around Haumea. A ring perturbed by an oblate central body and by an inclined satellite may…
From the archaeological point of view, the local dwarf galaxies are unique objects in which the imprint of the conditions that shaped the early structure formation can be studied today at high resolution. Over the last decade, this new…
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…
Hyperfields and systems are two algebraic frameworks which have been developed to provide a unified approach to classical and tropical structures. All hyperfields, and more generally hyperrings, can be represented by systems. Conversely, we…
We discuss the current knowledge of the Solar system, focusing on bodies in the outer regions, on the information they provide concerning Solar system formation, and on the possible relationships that may exist between our system and the…
In many dryland environments, vegetation self-organizes into bands that can be clearly identified in remotely-sensed imagery. The status of individual bands can be tracked over time, allowing for a detailed remote analysis of how human…
A circumsolar dust ring has been recently discovered close to the orbit of Mercury. There are currently no hypotheses for the origin of this ring in the literature, so we explore four different origin scenarios here: the dust originated…
We usually construct mathematical objects that are accessible, on which we can put our hands, but a huge part of the mathematical existing is actually wild. Here we explore part of the wild world: its inhabitants are knots that are…
It is shown how repeated observations of the sunset from various points up a tall building can be used to determine the Earth's radius. The same observations can also be used, at some latitudes, to deduce an approximate value for the amount…