Related papers: Giant Planets
The terrestrial and gas-giant planets in our solar system may represent some prototypes for planets around other stars; the exoplanets because most stars have similar overall elemental abundances as our sun. The solar system planets…
Uranus and Neptune are the last unexplored planets of the Solar System. I show that they hold crucial keys to understand the atmospheric dynamics and structure of planets with hydrogen atmospheres. Their atmospheres are active and storms…
Our understanding of the process of terrestrial planet formation has grown markedly over the past 20 years, yet key questions remain. This review begins by first addressing the critical, earliest stage of dust coagulation and concentration.…
Nearly 30 years after the discovery of the first exoplanet around a main sequence star, thousands of planets have now been confirmed. These discoveries have completely revolutionized our understanding of planetary systems, revealing types…
The basic geometry of the Solar System -- the shapes, spacings, and orientations of the planetary orbits -- has long been a subject of fascination as well as inspiration for planet formation theories. For exoplanetary systems, those same…
Giant planets are thought to have cores in their deep interiors, and the division into a heavy-element core and hydrogen-helium envelope is applied in both formation and structure models. We show that the primordial internal structure…
Tremendous progress in the science of extrasolar planets has been achieved since the discovery of a Jupiter orbiting the nearby Sun-like star 51 Pegasi in 1995. Theoretical models have now reached enough maturity to predict the…
Uranus and Neptune are the archetypes of "ice giants", a class of planets that may be among the most common in the Galaxy. They hold the keys to understand the atmospheric dynamics and structure of planets with hydrogen atmospheres inside…
In part I, using an effective computational approach, we have reconstructed the population of dust sources between Jupiter and Neptune. Here, in part II, we present the results on distribution of dust produced by 157 real sources (100…
Analysis of the statistical properties of exoplanets, together with those of their host stars, are providing a unique view into the process of planet formation and evolution. In this paper we explore the properties of the mass distribution…
Although the long-term numerical integrations of planetary orbits indicate that our planetary system is dynamically stable at least +/- Gyr, the dynamics of our Solar System includes both chaotic and stable motions: the large planets…
In most extrasolar planetary systems, the present orbits of known giant planets admit the existence of stable terrestrial planets. Those same giant planets, however, have typically eccentric orbits that hint at violent early dynamics less…
Ultra-hot Jupiters, an extreme class of planets not found in our solar system, provide a unique window into atmospheric processes. The extreme temperature contrasts between their day- and night-sides pose a fundamental climate puzzle: how…
We present updated atmospheric tables suitable for calculating the post-formation evolution and cooling of Jupiter and Jupiter-like exoplanets. These tables are generated using a 1D radiative transfer modeling code that incorporates the…
Deep elemental composition is a challenging measurement to achieve in the giant planets of the solar system. Yet, knowledge of the deep composition offers important insights in the internal structure of these planets, their evolutionary…
A wealth of Earth-sized exoplanets will be discovered in the coming years, proving a large pool of candidates from which the targets for the search for life beyond the Solar system will be chosen. The target selection process will require…
The formation history of Jupiter has been of interest due to its ability to shape the solar system's history. Yet little attention has been paid to the formation and growth of Saturn and the other giant planets. Here, we explore the…
The apparent regularity of the motion of the giant planets of our solar system suggested for decades that said planets formed onto orbits similar to the current ones and that nothing dramatic ever happened during their lifetime. The…
In the Solar System giant planets come in two flavours: 'gas giants' (Jupiter and Saturn) with massive gas envelopes and 'ice giants' (Uranus and Neptune) with much thinner envelopes around their cores. It is poorly understood how these two…
Our understanding of the processes that are relevant to the formation and maintenance of habitable planetary systems is advancing at a rapid pace, both from observation and theory. The present review focuses on recent research that bears on…