Related papers: What do we Really Know about Uranus and Neptune?
Composition of terrestrial planets records planetary accretion, core-mantle and crust-mantle differentiation, and surface processes. Here we compare the compositional models of Earth and Mars to reveal their characteristics and formation…
Modeling the interior of a planet is difficult because the small number of measured parameters is insufficient to constrain the many variables involved in describing the interior structure and composition. One solution is to invoke…
The planets within compact multi-planet systems tend to have similar sizes, masses, and orbital period ratios, like "peas in a pod". This pattern was detected when considering planets with radii between 1 and 4 $R_\oplus$. However, these…
Giant planets acquire gas, ices and rocks during the early formation stages of planetary systems and thus inform us on the formation process itself. Proceeding from inside out, examining the connections between the deep interiors and the…
The distant ice giants of the Solar System, Uranus and Neptune, have only been visited by one space mission, Voyager 2. The current knowledge on their composition remains very limited despite some recent advances. A better characterization…
Neptune's external mean motion resonances play an important role in sculpting the observed population of transneptunian objects (TNOs). The population of scattering TNOs are known to 'stick' to Neptune's resonances while evolving in…
The interior composition and structure of Uranus are ambiguous. It is unclear whether Uranus is composed of fully differentiated layers dominated by an icy mantle or has smooth compositional gradients. The Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP),…
Tidal interactions between Planet and its satellites are known to be the main phenomena, which are determining the orbital evolution of the satellites. We suggest in the current research to take into consideration the additional well-known…
The sample of known exoplanets is strongly biased to masses larger than the ones of the giant gaseous planets of the solar system. Recently, the discovery of two extrasolar planets of considerably lower masses around the nearby stars GJ 436…
The origin of rings around giant planets remains elusive. Saturn's rings are massive and made of 90-95% of water ice. In contrast, the much less massive rings of Uranus and Neptune are dark and likely to have higher rock fraction. Here we…
Sub-Neptunes occupy an intriguing region of planetary mass-radius space, where theoretical models of interior structure predict that they could be water-rich, where water is in steam and supercritical state. Such planets are expected to…
Interior models of Uranus and Neptune often assume discrete layers, but sharp interfaces are expected only if major constituents are immiscible. Diffuse interfaces could arise if accretion favored a central concentration of the least…
The magnetic fields of the Ice Giant Planets Uranus and Neptune (U/N) are unique in the solar system. Based on a substantial database measured on Earth for representative planetary fluids at representative dynamic pressures up to 200 GPa (2…
Many exoplanets have orbital characteristics quite different from those seen in our own solar system, including planets locked in orbital resonances and planets on orbits that are elliptical or highly inclined from their host star's spin…
Ab initio free energy calculations are employed to derive the entropy of liquid and superionic water over a wide range of conditions in the interiors of Uranus and Neptune. The resulting adiabats are much shallower in pressure-temperature…
The impact of the inner structure and thermal history of planets on their observable features, such as luminosity or magnetic field, crucially depends on the poorly known heat and charge transport properties of their internal layers. The…
Neutron stars are one of the most extreme objects in the universe, with densities that can exceed those of atomic nuclei and gravitational fields that are among the strongest known. Theoretical and observational research on neutron stars…
We review the current understanding of the upper atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune, and explore the upcoming opportunities available to study these exciting planets. The ice giants are the least understood planets in the solar system,…
We investigate the enrichment patterns of several delivery scenarios of the volatiles to the atmospheres of ice giants, having in mind that the only well constrained determination made remotely, i.e. the carbon abundance measurement,…
The currently available, detailed properties (e.g., isotopic ratios) of solar system planets may provide guides for constructing better approaches of exoplanet characterization. With this motivation, we explore how the measured values of…