Related papers: Can habitable planets form in clustered environmen…
Recent ALMA observations have identified a variety of dust gaps in protoplanetary disks, which are commonly interpreted to be generated by unobserved planets. Predicting mass of such embedded planets is of fundamental importance in…
With recent observations confirming exoplanets orbiting white dwarfs, there is growing interest in exploring and quantifying the habitability of temperate rocky planets around white dwarfs. In this work, the limits of the habitable zone of…
A survey of currently known planet-hosting stars indicates that approximately 25% of extrasolar planetary systems are within dual-star environments. Several of these systems contain stellar companions on moderately close orbits, implying…
Direct imaging surveys have found that long-period super-Jupiters are rare. By contrast, recent modeling of the widespread gaps in protoplanetary disks revealed by ALMA suggests an abundant population of smaller Neptune to Jupiter-mass…
Main sequence stars are commonly surrounded by debris disks, composed of cold dust continuously replenished by a reservoir of undetected dust-producing planetesimals. In a planetary system with a belt of planetesimals (like the Solar…
We calculate herein the late stages of terrestrial planet accumulation around a solar type star that has a binary companion with semimajor axis larger than the terrestrial planet region. We perform more than one hundred simulations to…
It appears that most stars are born in clusters, and that at birth most stars have circumstellar discs which are comparable in size to the separations between the stars. Interactions between neighbouring stars and discs are therefore likely…
The architecture of a planetary system can influence the habitability of a planet via orbital effects, particularly in the areas of stability and eccentricity. Some of these effects are readily apparent, particularly when they occur on…
We perform numerical simulations to study the Habitable zones (HZs) and dynamical structure for Earth-mass planets in multiple planetary systems. For example, in the HD 69830 system, we extensively explore the planetary configuration of…
We investigate the dependence of elemental abundances on physical constants, and the implications this has for the distribution of complex life for various proposed habitability criteria. We consider three main sources of abundance…
Plate tectonics is a fundamental component for the habitability of the Earth. Yet whether it is a recurrent feature of terrestrial bodies orbiting other stars or unique to the Earth is unknown. The stagnant lid may rather be the most common…
Recent discoveries of strongly misaligned transiting exoplanets pose a challenge to the established planet formation theory which assumes planetary systems to form and evolve in isolation. However, the fact that the majority of stars…
In models of planetary accretion, pebbles form by dust coagulation and rapidly migrate toward the central star. Planetesimals may continuously form from pebbles over the age of the protoplanetary disk by yet uncertain mechanisms. Meanwhile,…
The young star clusters we observe today are the building blocks of a new generation of stars and planets in our Galaxy and beyond. Despite their fundamental role we still lack knowledge about the conditions under which star clusters form…
Inspired by the close-proximity pair of planets in the Kepler-36 system, we consider two effects that may have important ramifications for the development of life in similar systems where a pair of planets may reside entirely in the…
The demographic of circumstellar disks, the birthplaces of planets, is diverse and rich in disks featuring rings, gaps, spirals, filaments, and arcs. Many studies revealing these disk structures have focused on objects around single stars…
New ALMA observations of protoplanetary disks allow us to probe planet formation in other systems, giving us new constraints on planet formation processes. Meanwhile, studies of our own Solar System rely on constraints derived in a…
The breadth of topics that encompass the search for life has expanded and evolved significantly since the emergence of the field of astrobiology. Initial astrobiology centered investigations focused on detecting biosignatures in the Martian…
Determining habitable zones in binary star systems can be a challenging task due to the combination of perturbed planetary orbits and varying stellar irradiation conditions. The concept of "dynamically informed habitable zones" allows us,…
As stellar compositions evolve over time in the Milky Way, so will the resulting planet populations. In order to place planet formation in the context of Galactic chemical evolution, we make use of a large ($N = 5\,325$) stellar sample…