Related papers: Dynamical Evolution of the Earth-Moon Progenitors …
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…
Planetary systems can evolve dynamically even after the planets themselves have fully formed, and there is circumstantial evidence that most planetary systems become unstable after the disappearance of the gaseous protoplanetary disk.…
The dynamical architecture and compositional diversity of the asteroid belt strongly constrain planet formation models. Recent Solar System formation models have shown that the asteroid belt may have been born empty and later filled with…
The satellites of extrasolar planets (exomoons) have been recently proposed as astrobiological targets. Since giant planets in the habitable zone are thought to have migrated there, it is possible that they may have captured a former…
The distribution of exoplanet masses is not primordial. After the initial stage of planet formation is complete, the gravitational interactions between planets can lead to the physical collision of two planets, or the ejection of one or…
The final stage of planet formation is dominated by collisions between planetary embryos. The dynamics of this stage determine the orbital configuration and the mass and composition of planets in the system. In the solar system, late giant…
The giant impact hypothesis remains the leading theory for lunar origin. However, current models struggle to explain the Moon's composition and isotopic similarity with Earth. Here we present a new lunar origin model. High-energy,…
It has been shown that some aspects of the terrestrial planets can be explained, particularly the Earth/Mars mass ratio, when they form from a truncated disk with an outer edge near 1.0 au (Hansen 2009). This has been previously modeled…
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…
Pebbles of millimeter sizes are abundant in protoplanetary discs around young stars. Chondrules inside primitive meteorites - formed by melting of dust aggregate pebbles or in impacts between planetesimals - have similar sizes. The role of…
Of the few thousand discovered exoplanets, a significant number orbit in the habitable zone of their star. Many of them are gas giants lacking a rocky surface and solid water reservoirs necessary for life as we know it. The search for…
Planets with masses larger than about 0.1 Earth-masses undergo rapid inward migration (type I migration) in a standard protoplanetary disk. Recent magnetohydrodynamical simulations revealed the presence of magnetically driven disk winds,…
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 present results from a suite of N-body simulations that follow the accretion history of the terrestrial planets using a new parallel treecode that we have developed. We initially place 2000 equal size planetesimals between 0.5--4.0 AU…
Our Solar system is almost entirely devoid of material interior to Mercury's orbit, in sharp contrast to the multiple Earth masses of material commonly residing within the analogous region of extrasolar planetary systems. Recent work has…
A gap in exoplanets' radius distribution has been widely attributed to the photo-evaporation threshold of their progenitors' gaseous envelope. Giant impacts can also lead to substantial mass-loss. The outflowing gas endures tidal torque…
The current standard theory of the origin of the Moon is that the Earth was hit by a giant impactor the size of Mars causing ejection of iron poor impactor mantle debris that coalesced to form the Moon. But where did this Mars-sized…
One of the unique aspects of Earth is that it has a fractionally large Moon, which is thought to have formed from a Moon-forming disk generated by a giant impact. The Moon stabilizes the Earth's spin axis at least by several degrees and…
To reproduce the orbits and masses of the terrestrial planets (analogs) of the solar system, most studies scrutinize simulations for success as a batch. However, there is insufficient discussion in the literature on the likelihood of…
Due to the chaotic nature of the Solar System, the question of its long-term stability can only be answered in a statistical sense, for instance, based on numerical ensemble integrations of nearby orbits. Destabilization of the inner…