Related papers: Chaotic exchange of solid material between planeta…

Exocomets scattered by planets have been invoked to explain observations in multiple contexts, including the frequently found near- and mid-infrared excess around nearby stars arising from exozodiacal dust. Here we investigate how the…

The most pristine remnants of the Solar system's planet formation epoch orbit the Sun beyond Neptune, the small bodies of the trans-Neptunian object populations. The bulk of the mass is in ~100 km objects, but objects at smaller sizes have…

Binary millisecond pulsars (BMSPs) are thought to have evolved from low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). If the mass transfer in LMXBs is driven by nuclear evolution of the donor star, the final orbital period is predicted to be well correlated…

Passing stars can perturb the Oort Cloud, triggering comet showers and potentially extinction events on Earth. We combine velocity measurements for the recently discovered, nearby, low-mass binary system WISE J072003.20-084651.2 ("Scholz's…

At least 30\% of main sequence stars host planets with sizes of between 1 and 4 Earth radii and orbital periods of less than 100 days. We use N-body simulations including a model for gas-assisted pebble accretion and disk--planet tidal…

We have carried out a series of calculations involving bacteria and viruses embedded in dust grains, which are ejected from our solar system by radiation pressure, and travel through space to other star systems. Under many conditions, this…

We present a parameter study of the possibility of tidally triggered disk instability. Using a restricted N-body model which allows for a survey of an extended parameter space, we show that a passing dwarf star with a mass between 0.1 and 1…

The photospheres of stars hosting planets have larger metallicity than stars lacking planets. In the present work we study the possibility of an earlier metal enrichment of the photospheres by means of impacting planetesimals during the…

Probabilities of collisions of migrating small bodies and dust particles produced by these bodies with planets were studied. Various Jupiter-family comets, Halley-type comets, long-period comets, trans-Neptunian objects, and asteroids were…

We estimate the likelihood of direct injection of supernova ejecta into protoplanetary disks using a model in which the number of stars with disks decreases linearly with time, and clusters expand linearly with time such that their surface…

Estimates of the frequency of planetary systems in the Milky Way are observationally limited by the low-mass planet regime. Nevertheless, substantial evidence for systems with undetectably low planetary masses now exist in the form of…

The dynamical structure of the Solar System can be explained by a period of orbital instability experienced by the giant planets. While a late instability was originally proposed to explain the Late Heavy Bombardment, recent work favors an…

Meteorites, which are remnants of solar system formation, provide a direct glimpse into the dynamics and evolution of a young stellar object (YSO), namely our Sun. Much of our knowledge about the astrophysical context of the birth of the…

The process of long-term stable mass transfer (or stripping) in a close neutron star binary system is possible at a sufficiently large initial asymmetry of the component masses. At the final stage of the evolution of such systems, the…

The hierarchical multiple system XY Leo, despite nearly 90 yr of observations, remains enigmatic. It offers a unique testbed for close binary evolution, involving processes such as mass transfer, angular momentum loss, and the von…

Based on telescopic observations of Jupiter-family comets (JFCs), there is predicted to be a paucity of objects at sub-kilometre sizes. However, several bright fireballs and some meteorites have been tenuously linked to the JFC population,…

Radial velocity and transit surveys indicate that solar-type stars bear super-Earths, with mass and period up to ~ 20 M_E and a few months, are more common than those with Jupiter-mass gas giants. In many cases, these super-Earths are…

The relative abundances of the radionuclides in the solar system at the time of its birth are crucial arbiters for competing hypotheses regarding the birth environment of the Sun. The presence of short-lived radionuclides, as evidenced by…

Tight binaries of helium white dwarfs (He WDs) orbiting millisecond pulsars (MSPs) will eventually "merge" due to gravitational damping of the orbit. The outcome has been predicted to be the production of long-lived ultra-compact X-ray…

Most models of volatile delivery to accreting terrestrial planets assume that the carriers for water are similar in water content to the carbonaceous chondrites in our Solar System. Here we suggest that the water content of primitive bodies…