Related papers: Constraining the primordial orbits of the Terrestr…
Many exoplanets in close-in orbits are observed to have relatively high eccentricities and large stellar obliquities. We explore the possibility that these result from planet-planet scattering by studying the dynamical outcomes from a large…
Gas giant planets have been detected on eccentric orbits several hundreds of astronomical units in size around other stars. It has been proposed that even the Sun hosts a wide-orbit planet of 5-10 Earth masses, often called Planet Nine,…
Complex structures, including sharp edges, rings and gaps, have been commonly observed in protoplanetary disks with or without planetary candidates. Here we consider the possibility that they are the intrinsic consequences of angular…
As gas giant planets evolve, they may scatter other planets far from their original orbits to produce hot Jupiters or rogue planets that are not gravitationally bound to any star. Here, we consider planets cast out to large orbital…
Recent analyses of Kepler space telescope data reveal that transiting planets with orbital periods shorter than about 2-3 days are generally observed around late-type stars with rotation periods longer than about 5-10 days. We investigate…
Terrestrial planet formation (TPF) is a difficult problem that has vexed researchers for decades. Numerical models are only partially successful at reproducing the orbital architecture of the inner planets, but have generally not considered…
We study the long term orbital evolution of a terrestrial planet under the gravitational perturbations of a giant planet. In particular, we are interested in situations where the two planets are in the same plane and are relatively close.…
Modern terrestrial planet formation models are highly successful at consistently generating planets with masses and orbits analogous to those of Earth and Venus. In stark contrast to classic theoretical predictions and inferred demographics…
It has been proposed recently that the first step in the formation of both rocky and gas giant planets is dust sedimentation into a solid core inside a gas clump (giant planet embryo). The clumps are then assumed to migrate closer to the…
Outward migration of low-mass planets has recently been shown to be a possibility in non-barotropic disks. We examine the consequences of this result in evolutionary models of protoplanetary disks. Planet migration occurs towards…
Circumbinary gas disks are often observed to be misaligned to the binary orbit suggesting that planet formation may proceed in a misaligned disk. With N-body simulations we consider the formation of circumbinary terrestrial planets from a…
The transits of a planet on a Keplerian orbit occur at time intervals exactly equal to the period of the orbit. If a second planet is introduced the orbit is not Keplerian and the transits are no longer exactly periodic. We compute the…
This paper uses an inductive method to investigate the factors responsible for variations in planetary-rotation periods. I began by showing the presence of a correlation between the masses of planets and their rotation periods. Then I…
In this work, we investigate configuration formation of two inner terrestrial planets near mean motion resonance (MMRs) induced by the perturbation of a distant gas-giant for the Kepler-68 system, by conducting thousands of numerical…
The known exoplanet population displays a great diversity of orbital architectures, and explaining the origin of this is a major challenge for planet formation theories. The gravitational interaction between young planets and their…
We investigate the possibility that the Moon's formation impact was triggered by an early dynamical instability of the giant planets. We consider the well-studied "jumping Jupiter" hypothesis for the solar system's instability, where…
The formation of the four terrestrial planets of the solar system is one of the most fundamental problems in the planetary sciences. However, the formation of Mercury remains poorly understood. We investigated terrestrial planet formation…
We use a hybrid, multiannulus, n-body-coagulation code to investigate the growth of km-sized planetesimals at 0.4-2 AU around a solar-type star. After a short runaway growth phase, protoplanets with masses of roughly 10^26 g and larger form…
We calculate the theoretical evolution of the radii of all fourteen of the known transiting extrasolar giant planets (EGPs) for a variety of assumptions concerning atmospheric opacity, dense inner core masses, and possible internal power…
Planets form in the discs of gas and dust that surround young stars. It is not known whether gas giant planets on wide orbits form the same way as Jupiter or by fragmentation of gravitationally unstable discs. Here we show that a giant…