Related papers: Chaotic exchange of solid material between planeta…

Stars formed in clusters can encounter other stars at close distances. In typical open clusters in the Solar neighbourhood containing hundreds or thousands of member stars, ten to twenty per cent of Solar-mass member stars are expected to…

We have performed detailed numerical calculations of the non-conservative evolution of close X-ray binary systems with intermediate-mass (2.0-6.0 M_sun) donor stars and a 1.3 M_sun accreting neutron star. We calculated the thermal response…

We explore the minimum distance from a host star where an exoplanet could potentially be habitable in order not to discard close-in rocky exoplanets for follow-up observations. We find that the inner edge of the Habitable Zone for hot…

The compositional and morphological evolution of minor bodies in the Solar System is primarily driven by the evolution of their heliocentric distances, as the level of incident solar radiation regulates cometary activity. We investigate the…

One of the major uncertainties in close binary evolution is the efficiency of mass transfer beta: the fraction of transferred mass that is accreted by a secondary star. We attempt to constrain the mass-transfer efficiency for short-period…

Interstellar material has been discovered in our Solar System, yet its origins and details of its transport are unknown. Here we present $\alpha$ Centauri as a case study of the delivery of interstellar material to our Solar System.…

Placing the architecture of the Solar System within the broader context of planetary architectures is one of the primary topics of interest within planetary science. Exoplanet discoveries have revealed a large range of system architectures,…

Most stars form in a clustered environment. Both single and binary stars will sometimes encounter planetary systems in such crowded environments. Encounter rates for binaries may be larger than for single stars, even for binary fractions as…

Most meteorites are fragments from recent collisions experienced in the asteroid belt. In such a hyper-velocity collision, the smaller collision partner is destroyed, whereas a crater on the asteroid is formed or it is entirely disrupted,…

Panspermia is the hypothesis that life originated on Earth from the bombardment of foreign interstellar ejecta harboring polyextremophile microorganisms. Since the 2017 discovery of the interstellar body 'Oumuamua (1I/2017 U1) by the…

We use the current orbital structure of large (>50km) asteroids in the main asteroid belt to constrain the evolution of the giant planets when they migrated from their primordial orbits to their current ones. Minton & Malhotra (2009) showed…

So far, more than 130 extrasolar planets have been found in multiple stellar systems. Dynamical simulations show that the outcome of the planetary formation process can lead to different planetary architectures (i.e. location, size, mass,…

Most planetary systems -- including our own -- are born within stellar clusters, where interactions with neighboring stars can help shape the system architecture. This paper develops an orbit-averaged formalism to characterize the cluster's…

About a quarter of massive binary stars undergo mass transfer while both stars burn hydrogen at their cores, first on the thermal and then on the nuclear timescale. The nuclear timescale mass transfer leads to observable counterparts: the…

Chandra observations of elliptical galaxies have revealed large numbers of Low Mass X-ray Binaries (LMXBs) accreting at rates above 10^-9 solar masses per year. One scenario which generates this transfer rate from an old stellar population…

Exoplanetary systems are found not only among single stars, but also binaries of widely varying parameters. Binaries with separations of 100--1000 au are prevalent in the Solar neighborhood; at these separations planet formation around a…

A planetary system may undergo significant radial rearrangement during the early part of its lifetime. Planet migration can come about through interaction with the surrounding planetesimal disk and the gas disk--while the latter is still…

Many of the multi-planet systems discovered to date have been notable for their compactness, with neighbouring planets closer together than any in the Solar System. Interestingly, planet-hosting stars have a wide range of ages, suggesting…

The modestly eccentric and non-coplanar orbits of the giant planets pose a challenge to solar system formation theories which generally indicate that the giant planets emerged from the protoplanetary disk in nearly perfectly circular and…

Mass transfer in binary systems is the key process in the formation of various classes of objects, including merging binary black holes (BBHs) and neutron stars. Orbital evolution during mass transfer depends on how much mass is accreted…